The Battle of Coruscant
by Kelleher
Summary: Mostly Han & Leia but all the usual OT suspects. Set immediately after the end of the original theatrical version of ROTJ (so no "weesa free" or toppling of statues has occurred). The Rebellion attempts to achieve a decisive victory over the Empire on Coruscant while Leia struggles with the Luke's revelation of her parentage and a new Sith Emperor even more vicious than the last.
1. Chapter 1

**NOTE: If you're seeing "new chapters" pop up on your notifications, it's just because I decided to clean up the writing in this a bit, since I rushed so much to get this done before TFA came out. So it's the same story I finished posting on 12/15/15, just a bit less messy in its writing. If you haven't read and you're visiting for the first time - happy to have you here, and please review, as reviews give a fan fic writer the motivation to keep going.**

Chapter 1

The victory celebration continued on deep into the night, becoming more and more raucous as Alliance pilots joined the gathering in the Ewok village. Fireworks sparkled across the sky, joining the final flaming remains of the Death hitting the atmosphere, joyful shouts of victory echoed through the forest, and too many intoxicants found their way into human and Ewok alike.

Han hadn't even touched a drop, Leia noted as she observed the revelers. That certainly wasn't like him. He could happily toss it back as efficiently as your average Corellian, but tonight - on the night of the Alliance's greatest victory yet, one that perhaps presaged the end of the whole war - he'd chosen not to, and she knew why: he needed to get some answers from her, and he intended to be stone cold sober while asking his questions.

They hadn't had another moment alone since Wicket interrupted them this afternoon, right after she'd revealed to Han that Luke was her brother. Of course, she'd only told him a part of the truth, the part that felt good and right. She'd considered Luke a brother for longer than he'd want to know; really, ever since that one ridiculous kiss she'd deployed on Hoth, which had felt so wrong the moment her lips touched Luke's, but which had so effectively frustrated the infuriating man she hadn't yet been willing to admit she loved.

She hadn't told Han the terrible revelation about her lineage that came along with her newfound sibling. The thought of telling him the whole truth made her stomach clench, although he needed to know everything so he could make his own decisions about what it meant to any future they might have. First, though, Leia needed a minute alone to refocus her tired mind and steel herself to whatever was to come. She quietly ducked away into the forest, hoping she was leaving unnoticed.

No such luck.

Han saw her departing and quickly excused himself from the group surrounding Lando, who was simultaneously embellishing his exploits in the Death Star battle and avoiding Han's look, which meant that he must have damaged the Falcon somehow. Han wanted to push the issue, but whatever was going on with Leia was more important.

He chuckled over that as he headed into the forest. Someone took precedence over the Falcon? It never stopped surprising him how Leia made what he'd thought were the most important things in his life take a backseat. Probably making him soft too, he grumped to himself. Not that he'd trade it all for anything in the galaxy, but it was more than a little unnerving. And right now, something was terribly wrong with her, no matter how hard she was trying to hide it. He could read those deep brown eyes like a datapad, and after an intense conversation he'd seen her have with Luke tonight - the second in two days - those eyes were filled with pain. The kid had left the celebration soon after.

Ah, hell, what was going on? Shouldn't they all, just for this one moment, be happy? Vader and the Emperor were dead. That seemed reason enough to celebrate. He especially wanted to raise a glass or six to Vader's demise, as that black-helmeted sonofabitch had nearly killed Han and everyone he cared about over the last few standard years. In fact, his only regret in this whole thing was that he hadn't pulled the trigger on the Death Star himself. Madine's decision to take his best pilot out of the sky hadn't made much sense to Han at the time, but given how much hot-wiring and sneaking around he'd done in the last two days, he realized Madine was shrewder than he thought. Not many Alliance generals had a significant background in breaking-and-entering.

Han came to a stop as, through the fog of the Endor night, he saw Leia standing on one of the rickety suspension bridges in the Ewok village. As always when he saw her alone, he was reminded of how delicate she was, something that never crossed his mind when they were fighting side-by-side. Then, he considered her the equal of any sentient, male or female, on his team. But when he saw her like this, sad and small, every protective instinct he had kicked in. She may not appreciate his need to protect her, but he couldn't help it.

"Leia?" he called, wondering if she was as upset as she'd been last night when he'd...well, acted like a jealous idiot when he'd seen her with Luke. He tried to wrap his head around the idea that it was only last night that he'd barged in on that conversation like a rancor in a Jerumian crystal shop. It had been a hell of a long and confusing day.

She looked up at him. "They're all celebrating as if the Empire has already fallen."

"It was a big win. Biggest we've ever had."

"We've?"

"Looks like I'm stuck with your crazy Rebellion now, Princess," Han grumbled, confident that Leia would know he didn't mean a word of his complaining.

"Coruscant hasn't surrendered."

"I have a feeling that we'll all be back at our posts soon enough. Let them blow off some steam tonight."

"Yes, General," she managed a small smile. "Why aren't you blowing off steam?"

_Tread carefully, Han_, he thought. "Because I'm feelin' like we need to talk."

She nodded, but gave him nothing more.

"Leia, I'm real confused here. I still haven't managed to get my brain around you and Luke-" She nodded again, but still said nothing. Han felt a prickle of annoyance; was she going to talk to him or not? He couldn't be expected to guess-

Suddenly, before he even realized it, she was in his arms, her lips pressed against his and her hands locked in his hair. She pulled him closer as she deepened their kiss, her tongue exploring his mouth until he was sure he was seeing the stars of Vanek. But this was only more proof that something was tremendously amiss. Leia, with her deeply ingrained Alderaanian conservatism, never initiated kisses like this one; he always had to coax her into it, and even that coaxing didn't always work. Now there was something desperate in the way she clung to him. It was as if they were back on Bespin and breaking this kiss could mean breaking apart forever. So he was not going to be the one to let go. Then, just as suddenly as she kissed him, she pulled away.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, blushing furiously.

He tried to catch his breath. "I'm not."

"I just wanted to kiss you once more before-"

"Dammit, Leia, what is it? Do you want me to go? Are you telling me we're done?"

"No, I-" she struggled.

"Then what is it? What could be so horrible that last night you couldn't even tell me and tonight you're out here looking like your heart is broken? The Emperor is dead. That black-robed bastard Vader is dead." He didn't notice her flinch at the name as he continued on, gaining steam. "We're both alive, your Rebellion is actually winning this thing, I finally get to stop worryin' that you're going to end up with Luke no matter how much I love you and now -" he stopped, slapping his hand against the wooden railing. "I'm sorry...I promised myself I wasn't gonna get angry, but Leia, you got me lost here. I'm worried, I don't know what the hell is going on, and it feels a hell of a lot like you're ending us."

Her heart skipped a beat at his use of "us" to describe them. It was so tempting to keep her secret hidden and be the "us" that he described, but she couldn't let him go on in the dark. "I need to explain what Luke told me last night. Then you get to decide if you still want there to be an 'us.' And I will understand, and I won't blame you, if you don't."

He shook his head. The girl must have gone battle-mad. "Leia, I can't think of anything you could possibly say that would make me walk away."

She smiled grimly. "You haven't heard this," she replied. Resolving herself to get this done as quickly as possible, she called on every ounce of her diplomatic instinct and training to block out her wildly churning emotions. "Can we speak on the Falcon? I want to discuss this in private."

Han saw the change come over her as she assumed the role she had to play in public but no longer chose to play around him. That worried him too. But he nodded and offered his hand. After a brief hesitation, she took it and followed him toward the landing platforms.

NNNNNNNNNN

Moff Zakine stood on the bridge of the Punisher, the newest Executor-class Star Destroyer in his fleet, sensing that something very bad had happened. It had been two days since he'd received any communications from Imperial Center on Coruscant, and the last deep space transmission he'd sent to Emperor Palpatine on the Death Star had gone unreturned. He'd heard the rumors of the Rebel fleet massing near Sullust, but he regarded those traitors as little more than resp gnats: annoying but easily slapped. And yet...no communications for two days.

"Commander, we have an urgent message for you from Imperial Center," called the young officer working the comm center. "From Grand Moff Essag."

Stranger still, thought Zakine. The Grand Moff rarely had reason to communicate directly with Imperial governors, especially those stationed in the Outer Rim. Something was definitely amiss.

"Forward the communication to my personal holo and order Admiral Samsa to join me in my quarters."

"Yes, sir," the officer saluted as Zakine hurried from the bridge.

NNNNNNNNNNN

Han spotted the missing sensor array as soon as the Falcon came into view. So that was why Lando had avoided him. He sighed; so much for not a scratch.

"What is it?" Leia asked.

"Nothin'. Just a little battle damage on her. It can wait." He didn't notice that he'd minimized his beloved ship's importance once again, but nodded in the direction of Luke, who was standing near the Falcon's gangway. "What's the kid want?"

"Probably to resolve an argument he and I had earlier."

"I saw that. What was that all about?"

Now it was Leia's turn to sigh. "We have vastly differing opinions on a very important issue."

"And in Basic, Your Highness?" Han couldn't resist gently needling her.

She didn't take the bait. "You'll understand soon." She dropped Han's hand and strode purposefully to Luke. "Luke, I meant what I said."

Luke nodded. "I just want you to consider what I said, too."

"Duly noted." Leia's face hardened as Han did a double-take. He felt like the galaxy was being flipped on its head. She sometimes shut him down with ice-cold composure when they argued, which, thankfully, they didn't do all that much anymore. But he'd never, ever seen her use the tactic on Luke.

"Leia, please. Let me be there when you tell Han. Because you're going to put this in the worst possible light."

"There is no other light, Luke." Leia felt herself caving to his desire to be present and she hated herself for it. But she was too tired and sad to fight, and she never really could fight with Luke anyway. He might be a Jedi Knight now, but to her Luke would always be the wide-eyed farmboy who rescued her from the Death Star, and it was impossible to feel she was fighting fair with that gentle soul. She considered that, given everything she now knew, and what it could mean for their future, she'd have to learn how to argue successfully against Luke – and fast. "Fine. We tell Han together. But you are going to listen this time - really listen - to what I'm going to say."

She hurried up the Falcon's gangway, trying to regain control of her emotions. This was just fantastic. She could lose Han and alienate Luke all at once. A perfect way to end a day that should have been one of the best of their lives.

"Whatever you did, kid…" Han mumbled to Luke as they followed Leia onto the Falcon,''...welcome to my world."

Disturbed as he was by Leia's intransigence, Luke couldn't help but smile as he followed Han onto the ship.

The two men joined Leia in the Falcon's main hold. She stood with her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, her forehead creased with the effort of holding back her feelings. She managed one quick glance into Han's worried hazel eyes before she turned away.

_Just tell him,_ she thought. _Don't couch this in the language of diplomacy; he won't appreciate that. Don't try to soften the blow; there is no softening this blow. Just tell him and let the chips fall where they may._

She turned back and cleared her dry throat. "Han, you know that I was adopted by the royal family of Alderaan as a baby; I'm not, by birth, of the House Organa."

He nodded.

"I have…I think I have…vague memories of a woman I believe to be my mother. I never knew my father."

He nodded again.

"Last night, when Luke explained that we were twins, he also told me the identity of our father."

Han saw the unshed tears forming in Leia's eyes. He moved towards her, but she blinked the tears back and raised a hand to stop him.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, looking at him sadly.

Han felt his blood turning cold as he met her pained gaze. What in the seven hells of Corellia-

"Han, Darth Vader is my father."

NNNNNNNNN

Zakine exhaled sharply as the transmission came to an end. It hardly seemed possible. Palpatine, Vader, and the Death Star. Gone in one fell swoop. He turned to Samsa, who was rooted to the floor, staring at the empty air where the transmission had been.

"Your thoughts?"

"According to the rules of succession, Grand Moff Essag now becomes our Emperor."

"Yes," Zakine nodded. "And both the Rebellion and every ambitious Moff in the Empire will now challenge that succession. The Rebellion with their fantasies of re-establishing the Republic and the Moffs with their dreams of becoming the Emperor themselves."

"And you, sir?"

"Me, Admiral Samsa? I'm a servant of the Empire. I'm afraid I have no dreams of glory." It was quite obvious that the next battle would be over the Imperial Center. Zakine didn't have a Death Star at his disposal, but there were other ways to wreak havoc. The four Executor-class dreadnaughts and one hundred Star Destroyers in his fleet were more than capable of causing mass casualties wherever necessary. And Essag wanted his fleet there. So be it.

"Your orders, then, Moff Zakine?"

"We do as Grand Moff Essag ordered. Set your course for Imperial Center and order the rest of the fleet to do the same."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Anakin Skywalker was our father," Luke gently corrected as Leia searched Han's face for some sign of his reaction.

Leia whirled on Luke. "And Anakin Skywalker apparently chose to go to the Dark Side and become Darth Vader. It's the same person, Luke, however much you may want to split his personality into two."

"Anakin was—"

"Luke, please, stop!" Leia begged as she turned to Han, who had been uncharacteristically quiet. "Han?"

Han rubbed his eyes, deep in thought. This didn't make any sense to him. Then again, nothing that had happened today made any sense to him, including winning the battle of Endor. "I wanna know who told you all this. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy to believe that you two are brother and sister, but I'm not seein' why Vader's your father."

"Vader told me on Bespin," Luke replied calmly. "And the Emperor confirmed it today."

"Oh, well if those two told you, it must be true," Han groused to no response. "And if Vader knew you were his kids on Bespin, why didn't he tell Leia when he was forcing us to enjoy lunch with him?" Han unconsciously took Leia's hand, just as he did that day on Bespin, as he spoke. She looked up at him, hoping against hope that his comforting gesture was his response to her news.

"Vader didn't know that there were twins, not until he read my thoughts today. I don't know when he realized there were children at all—"

"-maybe when he heard your last name was Skywalker, kid-"

"—since we were split up and intentionally kept far apart."

"And who told you that?" Han pressed.

"Ben Kenobi."

The old man? Impossible. "You've known this for almost three standard?"

Luke shifted uncomfortably. Han was _never _going to buy into the next part of his tale, no matter how true it was. How in the universe does one explain a Force Ghost to the galaxy's greatest skeptic?

"No. Certain Jedi, when they pass on, have the ability to return to communicate with other Force-sensitives. He told me on Dagobah, after Yoda died."

"So you're tellin' me you know this is true because you heard it from Vader, the Emperor, _and a GHOST?__**" **_Han didn't mean to raise his voice, but this was crazy. He turned to Leia. "And you buy this?"

Leia hesitated. Han was making some excellent points, but the more she had considered what Luke had told her, the more certain uncomfortable memories from her childhood fell into place. More than that, something in her heart told her it was true. Luke would call it being strong in the Force. Leia just called it intuition.

"I do, Han," she replied softly. "I know it sounds ridiculous….but when I was a child, I could always feel some kind of deep hesitance in my parents - my real parents - when I asked them about my birth parents. Which, of course, I did all the time as a young child. They always denied knowing anything about my birth father. They said he died when my mother was pregnant with me…and then they quickly changed the subject. They were so open with me about so many other things. But this…Vader…wouldn't you hesitate to explain that to a child?"

"Seems like at some point they would have told you."

"Maybe they intended to. Maybe they never got the chance because Tarkin and Vader turned my parents into space dust when they destroyed Alderaan." Leia fixed Luke with a sharp glance.

"And you believe this ghost thing?" Han continued to press.

"I've never known Luke to tell anything but the truth."

"Well, I can't prove or disprove this crazy Vader-is-Dad theory, but there is one thing I can do. Gimme a minute."

Han strode purposefully out of the main hold, headed toward the Falcon's medical bay. After some scrounging around, he returned and dropped an instrument on the djarik table.

"A gene sequencer?" Leia questioned. "Why in the stars—"

Han looked at her sheepishly. "Uhhh….a little trouble that happened a really, really long time ago."

"Ah. I see." She wasn't quite sure what more to say.

"Wasn't mine. 'Course I knew that without the sequencer, 'cause he wasn't a very good-looking kid," Han continued, hoping Leia was too distracted to make an issue out of a youthful indiscretion. "Gimme your hand, Luke. The real one."

Luke dutifully held out his hand. He didn't need any confirmation of something he knew to be true, but if it was going to help his friend come to grips with everything—

"Ouch!" Han's jab was unexpectedly sharp. Luke suspected that wasn't entirely unintentional.

Leia silently held out her arm. Han jabbed her with the sequencer, then pressed a few buttons. He waited as the sequencer beeped and clicked, then printed out its results.

"Well, you're definitely sister and brother," Han reported. "Too bad no one grabbed a chunk of Vader so we could resolve this thing once and for all."

Leia sighed. "Han, I think it is resolved. As much as I'd rather believe differently."

Han just shook his head. It didn't seem possible. Yet here were the only two humans in the galaxy that he'd trust with his life telling him that it was true.

"Palpatine was killing me, Han." Luke said quietly, speaking to both his his sister and his friend. "I'd defeated Anakin. But my powers weren't strong enough to overcome Palpatine. Anakin killed Palpatine before he died himself. I have no doubt that he was our father. And that there was still good in him."

"But not a hell of a lot of it," Han observed. "And if all this is true – if the old man knew this all along—why did he let you get involved in this war without telling you the truth in the first place? This is something you maybe should have known before you hopped my ship to Alderaan, right?"

Luke hesitated. Han, with his unerring way of sniffing out the chinks in someone's armor, had once again hit the mark. "I do feel somewhat betrayed by Ben," Luke admitted. "He and Yoda thought I wasn't strong enough in the Force to be able to cope with the truth. But if they wanted to protect me from the Empire, they should have told me."

"And, again, they should have changed your name," Han replied. "Kid, I'm not claiming to be the best strategist in the galaxy, but it sounds to me like you were being used as Vader bait for a very long time."

"Maybe I was," Luke shrugged. He'd had that thought himself, and it wasn't comfortable. "But if I was being used to kill Vader, at least I managed to be in a position where he could redeem himself before he died. He died as Anakin Skywalker, our father."

Luke turned to Leia, looking for some small acknowledgement that she hadn't entirely discounted the idea of Anakin's redemption. Han could have told Luke that was a really bad move, but he didn't much feel like it, because as far as he could tell, Luke was being a naïve do-gooder again, which he'd had always felt was Luke's biggest flaw. Of course, that tendency – one Luke shared with his sister - got Han rescued from a living death in a block of carbonite, so he couldn't complain too much.

"Stop it, Luke," Leia replied acidly. "I'm grateful that Vader had a moment of decency at the end of his pathetic existence. But one good act to save his son – when he knew he was probably dying – is far from redemption for all the things he did."

"Leia, you have to forgive him. You're strong in the Force and holding onto this hate will someday destroy you."

Han rolled his eyes. Vader would have been first on Han's list of people you just don't forgive. Ever. Even if he was your father.

"Forgive him?" Leia exploded. "Do you know what you're asking of me, Luke? Do you understand all the ways that monster destroyed my life and even now, from beyond the grave, may be destroying it even further?"

She cast an anxious glance at Han. Suddenly Han Solo felt like the dumbest nerf in the galaxy. Even he wasn't arrogant enough to believe that she was talking only about him when she acknowledged Vader's ability to scar her further from beyond the grave, but clearly that was a big part of her fear. In the heat of this tangle over Vader, Han had completely lost the thread. Leia had been so hesitant to tell him what was going on over the last day because she truly believed that Han would walk away from her once he knew the truth. And obviously, she still believed he had a foot out the door.

"I've been trying to hold together all the parts of me that Vader broke since the day I met you." Leia continued. "He made me watch when he killed over a billion people on a planet I was trained to rule someday. And trained to be willing to give my life for. A billion people, Luke. I watched them die. And I will always feel responsible for it."

"That was Tarkin," Luke responded quietly, weakening in his defense of Anakin. He remembered Ben's words about the destruction of the planet. Millions of voices had cried out in terror, he said, and were suddenly silenced. Vader hadn't stopped it; Vader had approved. Where was the good in Anakin when that happened?

"Yes, you're right, Vader only stood there pinning my arms so that I couldn't turn away to avoid watching everyone I loved die. And that was after he'd tortured me with the mind probe which, but the way, was almost unendurably painful. Then on Bespin, he tortured Han even worse – for no particular reason other than to cause him pain. Vader left me in the next chamber over so I could hear Han screaming in pain for hours. And the next day I stood in a carbon-freezing chamber as Vader casually threw away Han's life just to see if he could safely use that thing on you, because he planned to deliver you to the Emperor and destroy you too."

Leia took a deep breath. She was going to lose control and give in to the horror of these memories if she went any further, and she couldn't let that happen. There was too much war left to fight for her to start giving in to this. Someday, she knew, she would have to face down all the pain she'd held at bay, but not now.

"So maybe if you can see good in the man, it's only because you didn't have a front-row seat to so much of the harm he did, and don't want – desperately – to believe that he's going to face some justice for that somewhere in the universe," she concluded.

"He did cut off my hand, Leia."

"He tore apart my soul," Leia replied. "Repeatedly. And the fact that he didn't manage to kill everyone I've ever loved – that was only luck. I can't discuss this any further."

With that, she quickly left the hold. Han heard her shut the door to his cabin. At least he knew where to find her, but he was at a loss as to what exactly he'd say when he did.

"Kid, you should go," he said to Luke. "She came here to talk to me and this got all turned around."

Luke opened his mouth to speak, but Han raised a hand to stop him.

"Luke, really. Whatever you're gonna say, it'll keep. I need to go to her."

Luke nodded. "Okay. You're right. Han…I'm sorry too."

"I'm not angry. It is what it is," Han sighed.

Luke turned and punched in the code to lower the gangway, wondering idly if Han would be as forgiving of the situation after he thought about it for a few hours. He couldn't deny that all of what both Han and Leia had said was true. They had suffered, repeatedly and directly, at the hands of Darth Vader. Luke had only been face-to-face with him twice – three times, if he counted the battle over the first Death Star – and twice he had emerged victorious from those encounters, even achieving the ultimate success in rescuing his father from the Dark Side. Luke took no personal pride in that, only satisfaction that Anakin had been saved and, if he were honest, satisfaction that he hadn't done what Yoda and Ben had demanded. But he couldn't get that number, a billion people dead on Alderaan, out of his head. Countless billions more had been killed or enslaved during Palpatine and Vader's reign of terror. Although Anakin had been redeemed in the Force – his appearance as in Jedi robes along with Yoda and Ben tonight convinced Luke of that – the incalculable harm he'd wrought on the galaxy, and, more personally, on his sister, was undeniable and unremedied. Luke wondered what harm he had yet to find as he sought to uncover the legacy of his father. Was Leia right? Was he being a fool to openly forgive Anakin without considering the lack of justice for Vader's many victims?

As he closed up the ship behind him, he felt exhaustion encroaching. He just wanted to sleep, but he was in for a long night of meditating in the Force, searching for answers to the questions now filling his mind.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

"Leia?" Han knocked on the door of his cabin.

She opened the door slowly. This was the moment she'd been dreading, when Han, knowing everything, would have to make his decision about what all of this meant to him. She didn't notice that she trembled as she looked up at him.

Han did. She always trembled when something frightened her, and the fact that she was as afraid of losing him as he was of losing her felt both wonderful and awful at the same time. Yes, he'd been willing to step back if she really wanted Luke, but it would have cracked his heart in two to do it. He studied her face silently for a moment, hoping the right words would come out.

She couldn't bear his silence for one more moment.

"Han, do you want me to go?" she asked.

Suddenly he knew exactly what he wanted to say. What he'd wanted to say for longer than he'd ever admit.

"No. No, I want you to stay for good. Marry me, Leia."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"No!" Admiral Gial Ackbar shook his head. "We lost half of our fleet yesterday. We need time to regroup! As other planets see the holos we've transmitted of the loss of the Death Star and hear confirmation of the deaths of Vader and Palpatine, they will turn and send more men. THEN we attack."

"I entirely disagree," replied General Jan Dodonna.

The Alliance High Command, gathered in a conference room on Home One, seemed no closer to a decision than they'd been when they locked the room's blastdoors and activated its soundproofing three hours ago. Determining when to launch an attack on Coruscant, the Imperial Center itself, was not easy; an attack at any time soon would tax the Alliance's already-diminished resources to their breaking point. But the messages they'd been receiving from Rebel spies embedded deep within the Imperial government told of disarray over the last twelve timeparts as word of the death of Vader and the Emperor had spread. The Alliance intercepted and sliced a holo of Essag's order that large swaths of the Imperial Navy redeploy to the skies above Coruscant, so unless the Rebels got their ground forces through the planetary shield quickly, they'd have to fight their way through the Imperial Navy before commencing a ground assault. But no matter how soon the ground forces made it planetside, the Navy would soon enough arrive, meaning that this battle would again take place on two fronts. While they had managed to fight a space battle with a small force of Rebels deployed on Endor, everyone in the room knew this would be a battle on a different scale entirely. They'd need a full complement of troops both on the ground and in the skies, and they weren't at all sure they had enough personnel. But if they delayed…

"Their entropy will not increase for long. Essag will consolidate power. We must strike before they can reorient themselves to their new reality. And by that I mean within one week. This window won't last long." Crix Madine didn't love the idea of throwing his already-tired ground troops into urban warfare in the Imperial Center, but he saw no way around it. "And we need to lock down the government sector of the planet before the Empire can send reinforcement troops."

Carlist Rieekan shut his eyes. He'd seen too many deaths over the course of the last several years, and this promised to be a bloodbath, both on the ground and in the sky. He was either getting sentimental or going battle-mad. This plan guaranteed mass casualties both among the Alliance and among the citizenry of the Imperial Center. Some of those citizens were highly-enough placed in the Imperial ranks that Carlist wouldn't spare their deaths a second thought, but there were many more billions of innocent civilians on Coruscant who never had the opportunity to run when the Old Republic fell and were forced to live their lives in the dark heart of the Empire's bureaucracy. Now, fighting for their lives, the Imperials would fight dirty. What, after all, were a few hundred thousand civilian deaths to a regime which had killed so many billions so easily?

"And what," Carlist mused aloud, "if we lose this battle?"

His question silenced the room as each officer silently took stock of what a loss would mean. A loss would erase their gains in the victory at Endor. A loss would set them back to more years of guerilla attacks with forces so depleted that recruitment and finances would become their primary concerns. The millions of credits Bail and Breha Organa had secretly funneled from their private family funds to the Alliance in the years before the destruction of Alderaan were almost entirely gone.

"Every war has a battle that can't be lost," responded Madine carefully. "And I believe we've reached that battle."

The silence descended again. Either path the Alliance took was fraught with danger. No one wanted to make this decision without analyzing every possible angle and without believing that they could win. Carlist jumped as a loud beep sounded, and a holo of a young man appeared.

"Yes, soldier?" Mon Mothma, who had been listening closely to the differing opinions of her advisors but speaking little throughout the session, shifted in her chair.

"Ma'am, Corellia, Isithorne, and Kashyyk are reported to be in open revolt against their Imperial governments. We're also receiving reports of the beginnings of revolt on Meraci and Pletith. The Imperials have diverted several ships from their Navy to each of these worlds. We also…we have an unconfirmed report that Moff Zakine's Outer Rim Fleet has just made the jump to hyperspace and is heading for Coruscant."

"Thank you for your report, soldier, that will be all," Mon clicked off the holo. "Gentlemen, your thoughts?"

The officers took a moment to process the news. Planets in open revolt – a significant sign that the freedom-loving people of the galaxy felt this the time to strike. Madine took particular pride in the news that his homeworld of Corellia had been among the first to rise; he was sure General Solo would feel a similar pride when he heard the news. Those revolts – especially if the Corellia revolts reached the shipyards - would keep some of the Imperial Navy tied up and away from Coruscant. But if the rumors regarding Zakine's fleet were true, an overwhelmingly large force would arrive in the skies above Coruscant in less than three days. No one knew exactly how large, as Zakine had never gathered his fleet in one place until, apparently, now.

"My opinion remains. This is the time to strike," Madine repeated. "We will lose many – too many – fighters, but…"

"Many innocents on Coruscant will die," added Rieekan.

"And what if we are being suckered into a trap?" Ackbar queried.

"That is a risk we have to take," Dodonna replied.

Mon looked around the room at her most trusted military advisors. They'd taken the Alliance to the brink of victory, but now the room was fractured, split between two very valid viewpoints. Once she made her, the military men would all do their very best to implement it, no matter what misgivings they had, but the very fact that they were so split alarmed Mon. She agreed with Madine that any Imperial disarray would soon be quashed. She agreed with Rieekan that the casualties among the civilian populace of Coruscant, as well as their own casualties, would be extreme. She also knew that at least some of their spies hidden in the Imperial government were likely double agents, hence the need to cross-check all of their information with other agents. Mon pondered her options. She was used to making difficult decisions, but this time, she truly felt the weight of the future of the galaxy on her shoulders.

"Palpatine would not have left the throne to a man less brutal than himself," she said quietly. "Carlist is correct; the Empire will not hesitate to kill as many civilians on Coruscant as they feel are in the way of total victory. And we will suffer too many casualties. But many billions of innocents have already died at the hands of the Empire. This is the time to attack. General Madine, Admiral Ackbar, please implement the plans. Call back the commanders for briefing at thirteen hundred hours. And may the Force be with us."

NNNNNNNNNNNNN

Essag strode through the ranks of officers gathered at attention in the Emperor's throne room high above the abandoned chambers of the Imperial Senate. His Red Guard already stood imposingly on both sides of the throne. Of their loyalty, Essag had no doubt. After his graduation from the Imperial Academy, he had spent his first fourteen years of service to Palpatine among them, training in their deadly arts. And then there were the lessons from Palpatine himself, which led to the position of Grand Moff of the Imperial Center, and therefore third in the line of succession, as well as a much more clandestine role which, as far as Essag could determine, Palpatine never suspected.

No doubt that rapid advancement had caused much outrage among the other Moffs and the military, many of whom stood before him now. They likely found the darkly-handsome man of forty-one standard unfit to succeed Palpatine. He'd soon correct that impression.

"My friends," Essag began smoothly, "and loyal officers of the Empire. We have suffered a great loss at the hands of the Rebellion. But our retribution is at hand and soon we will soon assure they are of no further concern to us. Our double agents have reported to them that we are in a state of disarray in order to provoke them to attack Imperial Center sooner rather than later."

While most of the assembled officers stood stone-faced, Admiral Klim Gital did not bother to hide a small, incredulous shake of the head. Even now, when they had lost two Death Stars, Vader, and the Emperor, they had not learned.

"Do you have a concern, Admiral Gital?" Essag's eyes narrowed, focusing on the older man.

"Emperor," Gital bowed slightly. "With all respect, sir, we are in a state of disarray."

"No, Admiral," Essag said. "Indeed we are not."

"Our Endor fleet is destroyed, there are revolts on several core systems—"

"If such minor uprisings and insignificant losses are enough to create disarray within the Empire, then I would question whether the men in this room should retain their heads, much less their commands."

"Our overconfidence has always been our undoing insofar as the Rebels are concerned."

Essag frowned. Gital usually did have too much to say, but he had just given Essag an opening to deliver a lesson. "Captain Qualus, commencing mining any buildings you see fit. You will control their detonation from Defense Command in the Palace once the Rebels attack. General Divon, station the AT-ATs and ST-ATs throughout the government center of the planet at will."

"Sir, for urban combat—" Divon hesitated.

"Yes, they are entirely unfit for urban combat. I am aware that the scope of the destruction will be vast. Now go."

The men nodded, bowed, and beat a hasty exit.

"You cannot destroy the capital!" sputtered Gital.

"Oh, but I can, Admiral Gital. I can destroy whatever I choose to destroy."

With that, Essag quickly raised his hands, letting his power flow through him. The assembled officers saw only the slightest energy displacement shimmer towards Admiral Gital. With a strangled gasp, Gital fell to the floor, dead.

"You're a Sith," whispered one of the officers.

"Did you expect Emperor Palpatine to leave the Empire in the hands of any less?" Essag strode to Gital's body, extending his arms once again and allowing the power of the Force to flow through him. "Now rise, Klim Gital."

The officers exchanged worried glances. A Sith Essag might be, but even Palpatine couldn't return a man from the dead. Perhaps Essag was not only a Sith, but insane as well.

Klim Gital let out a choked scream, scrambling to his knees and gasping for air.

"And how was your brief visit to the darkness beyond, Admiral?" Essag asked, sensing the fear growing in the officers in the room, which was exactly as he desired it.

Gital remained on his knees, his eyes darting frantically around the room. "Forgive me, Emperor. Forgive me, I meant no disrespect or—"

Essag laughed at the pathetic words from the pathetic man. "You, Klim Gital, are about to be a witness to history. As for the rest of you, my friends, thank you for your service to the Empire. But your time has come to an end."

With a slight raise of one hand, Essag focused his energy through the room, striking down the offices before him, leaving Gital and the Royal Guard the only other living creatures in the room.

"You have just seen, Klim Gital, the birth of a greater Empire than that you served. A shame you will not survive long enough to see the destruction of Imperial bureaucracy and the Rebellion alike." Essag waved to the Red Guardsmen. "Take him to detention."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

For a moment, Leia was too stunned to think, to speak, even to move. Han couldn't have said what she'd heard, not after everything she and Luke had just revealed to him. But there he was, looking at her with a combination of hope and feigned confidence that didn't at all hide his tension as he waited for her answer.

"You're not serious," she managed to whisper.

Instantly, the hurt in his eyes told her that he'd said exactly what she'd heard, and she'd blurted out exactly the wrong thing. She silently cursed herself for not keeping her wits. Hurting him was the furthest thing from her mind; she actually didn't think that she'd ever loved him more than she did right now as he made this crazy, heroic attempt to protect her from the firestorm that was sure to arise when her true family history became known.

Han released his grip on her hands. "Right. Still not good enough, huh? Thought we were pretty far past that." He turned to walk away.

That his immediate reaction was to remember all the times that she'd thrown her superior social status in his face cut like a knife. It was so long ago now. But apparently her repeated taunts had stuck with him more than she wanted to believe.

"No!" she cried out as she blocked his path away from her. "Please, Han. It's not that. It's me. I know you're trying to protect me from this by offering to marry me, but—"

"Protect you?" Han looked at her quizzically.

"Yes! From whatever will happen when everyone discovers that Vader—"

"Leia, if that's true and it gets known, I can't protect you from the fallout, much as I want to."

"Then why—" She went pale, allowing herself to wonder for a moment if love was his only motive for the proposal, and if she had botched this even more than she knew.

Watching Leia doing her usual trick of assuming that his motives were way more complicated than they actually were, Han made his second big decision of the last ten minutes. It was past time for him to go all-in with the truth. "I do try to protect you. Guess it's kinda what I do. But I've got a bad feeling that if you say yes to me, half the Alliance – hell, half the galaxy – is gonna hate that you ended up with someone not-so-respectable. And you're gonna have to deal with that on top of the Vader thing. So maybe saying no is the smartest thing you could do. But I'm just telling the woman I love that I want to spend the rest of my life with her and hopin' she wants the same with me. Even though she's gonna get a lot of flak for it."

She was so touched by his simple honesty that "yes" was on the tip of her tongue. But she couldn't bear it if he ran headlong toward her and came to regret it. There was too much she had to make him think through before he took this giant leap.

"You're perfectly respectable, Han," she said quietly. "Anyone who thinks otherwise is not worth a second of my time or consideration. But I'm not who you thought I was."

"You're exactly who I know you are. Short, mouthy, stubborn, and a really good kisser considering the only two people you've ever kissed are me and your brother." He held his breath for some sort of smile – or at least a half-hearted stinging retort – but Leia just shook her head. She didn't think she could make him understand her hesitance, because she wasn't making sense even to herself. A half hour ago, she was desperate to hear Han tell her that despite everything, they were going to be okay. Here he was, telling her so much more than that, and she was pushing him away because of fears she couldn't yet grasp and translate into words.

"Leia, do you really think it matters to me if your biological father is a king or a sonofabitch?" Han asked. "I hate it – I hate that Vader's your father because of what it's doing to you. You've lived through way too much already and you shouldn't have to deal with this too. But for me? Nothing's changed."

"Then you're not thinking!" She intended to snap at him, but it came out as a choked sob. "I'm the daughter of a Sith Lord -"

"-and I'm the son of who-knows-what-"

"—and Luke says that I'm strong in the Force too. That I have the same potential he had," Leia continued. "He wants to train me to become a Jedi too."

Han really hated that idea, for various reasons, but he wasn't going to set foot in that minefield right now. "That's your call, Leia. Not Luke's and not mine."

"But what if…"she struggled to find the right words. It seemed ludicrous, but the fear that had been nagging at her suddenly took full form in her mind. She hesitated to say it to Han, knowing that he was, on his best day, on the fence about the existence of the Force.

"What if I turn to the Dark Side?" she blurted out. "If my father turned so very evil, what's there to stop me from becoming exactly like him and destroying you, and Luke, and everyone who stands between me and whatever it is I want?"

She looked defensively at Han, half expecting him to laugh at her or to scoff. The way she felt right now - so exposed, bruised, and even a little foolish – if Han did mock her fears, she was ready for a fight. But to her surprise, he looked down at her with a gentle smile on his face.

"You, sweetheart? Not a chance." His lips brushed against her forehead. "You and Luke are the only two completely good people I've ever met…which can be real annoying," he added under his breath, still hoping to coax a smile from her. Still no dice.

"I have so much anger," she said. "Isn't that what Luke says leads to the Dark Side?"

Han shrugged. "Seems to me you have a lot of good reasons to be angry."

She considered his statement. Her reasons for anger weren't at all unjustified. The anger itself was probably useless, but with all the hells she'd been through, it would always, she believed, be there. So maybe the answer was just to refuse any training. That way she couldn't be any real danger. Not to herself, nor to Han or to —

"What about children?" she whispered, horrified.

"Children?" Han frowned. He wasn't a dumb guy, but this proposal had taken so many twists and turns, he defied any human male to be able to keep up.

"Don't you want children?" Leia felt herself blushing. This wasn't a conversation they'd ever had. Expressing hope that someday in the future you'd have children with someone seemed to be the height of tempting fate in the middle of the war. Plus, their relationship had been almost absurdly chaste. To say Han wasn't overly thrilled about that state of affairs would have been an understatement, but he never pushed her - well, not too much, anyway—to places her strict upbringing made her uncomfortable to go, so conversations about children, and avoiding unexpected ones, had never become necessary. "I mean, someday, after the war is over, if we both survive, and…" she trailed off, hoping that her cheeks weren't as red as she was afraid they might be.

"I'm just tryin' to get to a yes on the marriage thing, Leia, so I'm starting to feel real hopeful if we're talking about our potential future children," he teased.

He did get a small smile out of her with that. A wave of relief washed over him. Maybe he was making some progress. But he chose his next words carefully.

"I spent most of my life before I met you tryin' not to have children, but…yeah, I'd really like to meet a little version of 'us' someday," he said. "You're forgetting something though-"

"Darth Vader's legacy. How could I saddle a child with that? Is that what you would want for your children?" It had been a given for as long as she could remember that she would be expected to have children who would be future heirs to the Alderaanian throne. But suddenly a life without children seemed to be the only way. "And what if our children were Force-sensitive? The Jedi used to take children as young as two into their temple to train them and protect them from the Dark Side. I couldn't have children and then see them taken away like that. But otherwise, how could they be protected? And what if they become like Vader? That's a legacy I can't risk passing on…Han, I can't. I can't have children." She was sure, now, that Han would see the insurmountable problems marriage to her would cause.

He took a moment to let her calm down before answering quietly. "You're forgetting something, Leia. I spent six months frozen in a block of carbonite. We don't even know if I'm gonna be able to father children anymore." He didn't realize how humiliating it would be to put that into words. He was sure she'd done her homework on the possible long-term effects of carbonite poisoning long before she'd freed him on Tatooine, so this was probably no surprise to Leia, but his possible limitations were something she needed to remember in case she wasn't so set on the kids issue.

Leia laughed bitterly. "I know that. Vader certainly left us the perfect couple, didn't he?"

"I think we're still a damn good couple. Despite everything."

Leia nodded. "Han, the one thing I've always been pretty sure of, despite any medical research to the contrary, is that you will be able to have children, carbonite poisoning and hibernation sickness or not." She smiled at him weakly.

"Damn right," his lopsided smile was a little sad, not nearly as confident as usual. "Leia, tell you what. We don't need to figure out our whole future tonight. You didn't write me off even though you've known for months that I maybe can't have kids. And I get why you would be afraid to have kids. Just promise me that when – if – the time comes, we'll talk about it. And if your answer is still no, or if I can't, and we decide we want to…there's a lot of kids out there in the galaxy who need parents. You and me were two of them."

Leia nodded. "I would do that in a heartbeat."

"Me too."

Han tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear as they stood looking at each other silently for a moment.

"So, Princess, you finished finding every reason in the universe that you aren't good enough for me? Not that I really mind having the upper hand for a while here, y'understand."

Leia smiled shyly. She probably should have known that every reason she'd given Han to reconsider his proposal wouldn't dissuade him once he'd made his mind up. As for her, she'd made her mind up back on the morning of their escape from Tatooine when in this very room, Han, suffering horribly from a second wave of hibernation sickness, had pulled her close and whispered weakly, "I love you." And then repeated it twice more after the sickness had passed, just to make sure she knew he meant it. If there hadn't been the Vader problem tonight, she would have jumped into his arms and shouted "yes."

"Did I just ruin the only proposal I've ever wanted to hear?" she asked him.

"Oh, so there have been others?" he joked. "I dunno then, I thought I was special."

"You are," she replied softly. "The rest were directed to my father by nobles looking to make an important political alliance."

Han looked away. "I wish I could give you what they could—"

She quickly raised a finger to his lips to silence him. "You've given me so much more. Loving someone, and being loved back, wasn't going to be a part of my life. Then you showed up and changed everything."

He took her hand and kissed it gently, pulling her closer to him. Leia was reminded of the moments before their first kiss. This time, she had no intention of running away.

"Remember when I told you that I wasn't in this for your Rebellion and I wasn't in this for you, Princess?" Han's voice had dropped to that gravelly whisper that always made her knees go weak.

She nodded. She remembered that exchange well. "I was so angry at you, and angrier at myself for being so disappointed."

"I'm in this for you," he paused to let that sink in. "Marry me, Leia. I want to be your husband."

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. I want to be your wife." With that, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him with unbridled passion.

Han Solo had never felt joy like this in his entire life. He could feel his heart pounding with elation in his chest as he kissed her. Part of him wanted to run out into the night and tell anyone who'd listen that, against odds even Goldenrod couldn't calculate, this woman was going to marry him. But the rest of him intended to stay here in her arms forever. Suddenly, though, he realized –

"Alderaanians wear rings," he said, breaking the kiss. "I don't have a ring or anything—"

"I'm not in this for jewelry, hotshot," she smiled, nuzzling her nose against his.

"Good, Your Highnessness," he replied. "Because I'm pretty sure bein' a General in your Rebellion is a volunteer gig at the moment."

She laughed out loud. That full-throated laugh of hers; it was so un-princesslike and his favorite sound in the galaxy. He heard it far too infrequently. He planned on changing that.

"You're probably right," she agreed. "And you found yourself the only princess in the galaxy without a dowry, Han."

"Guess my mercenary credentials are well and truly shot, then."

"Looks like it," she agreed.

As he leaned in to kiss her again, she realized there was something she wanted to tell him. "Wait! One more thing."

"I think we should stop talkin' and use our lips for better things—"

She looked at him archly. "Maybe you were going to like what I had to say."

"Alright, Princess. Shoot,'" he grinned.

"Thank you." She gave him that huffy look that often bothered him no end. Tonight, because he knew she didn't mean it at all, it just made him chuckle. "What I was going to say, General…"

Her tone softened as she looked up at him. She knew, better than anyone, the lifetime of struggle and the many wounds he carried under the bravado, and she wanted him to hear this because, too many times in their early years, she'd searched out those wounds and fired right at them. He'd always fired back, of course, but most of the time, she'd shot first.

"You've said, several times, that you always thought you were going to lose me to Luke. What I want you to know is that it was always you, Han. Even when I didn't want it to be, even when I fought against it, it was you," she kissed his cheek gently. "Always."

"Of course it was. I mean, c'mon, how could you resist?" He smiled that familiar cocky smile, but he knew she could see his gratitude for her words.

"Ah, right, I forgot. You're irresistible," she teased, resting her head against his chest. She was starting to feel sleepy. She hadn't realized how much the battle, her injured arm, and this avalanche of emotions had taken out of her, and she felt so safe and warm in his arms.

"I love you, Leia," he said simply.

She was about to respond with their usual answer, but at this moment, it just didn't feel right.

"I love you, too," she replied. "So very much."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

As he walked to the shuttle he'd flown back from the Death Star, Luke sensed Leia's sadness being overtaken by a burst of happiness followed almost instantly by a flood of confusion. Although he was sorely tempted to discover just what Han had said or done to prompt these emotions in such rapid succession, Luke quickly closed his mental connection to his sister. Using the Force to be nosy couldn't be a good thing. Besides, whatever Han had done, it distracted Leia from all the negative emotions swirling around her, and that was good enough.

Luke felt his leg cramp as he reached the shuttle's hold. Every muscle and joint in his body was beginning to ache; a result, no doubt, of Palpatine's Force lightning. He would have to put himself through the few healing meditations he'd learned and would probably end up seeing a medic sometime soon anyway. Grabbing his sleeping pallet, he walked back out into the night, having no desire to meditate and sleep in the shuttle where his father's body and Darth Vader's armor had so recently lain, not when he'd seen Anakin's Force Ghost so wonderfully present and real a few hours ago. He hoped Anakin would return to him in his meditations tonight, although he knew the Force well enough to know that he rarely got what he wanted.

_Millions of voices cried out in terror…_

Ben's words from years past echoed in Luke's head as he sat down to meditate.

_A billion people. I watched them die…_

Leia's words from this evening rapidly followed. Nothing that Han or Leia had said to him tonight was wrong, despite his eagerness for Leia to accept that their father had redeemed himself at the end. Han and Leia were just looking at things from a different point of view. Luke chuckled mirthlessly at that. Ben had used those words back on Dagobah to justify withholding the whole truth about Vader. Although Luke still struggled with what he considered Ben's betrayal, Han and Leia's point of view on this matter were entirely fair.

Leia's especially. Han once observed that Leia tried to avoid facing the pain of all that had happened to her over the course of the war by ignoring it. Luke wondered, if by arguing with his friends and ascribing perhaps too much good to Anakin, he was the one trying to hold pain at bay now. Pain – or insecurity.

Insecurity because suddenly, for the first time, Luke could see the possibility of a galaxy beyond this war, and he was deeply unsure of his place in it. He'd completed the task Yoda and Ben had given him – the only reason, perhaps, that they had trained him at all, which was something he didn't want to consider. He'd destroyed the Sith. Palpatine was dead, Vader also, and Anakin Skywalker lived on in the Force. Strange, he reflected, that Yoda and Ben had been so intent on Luke destroying Vader, when Palpatine, as far as Luke was concerned, was not only the greater evil but, as Vader's master, the stronger Sith. And strange too that they had told him little of the Jedi's involvement in the Clone Wars and the collapse of the Old Republic. Nearly everything he knew about the fall of the Old Republic came from Leia, who, during the long months they searched the galaxy for Han, shared with him what she'd learned from Bail Organa about the Republic's fall. Clearly, Bail had not known everything, or he had chosen to spare his daughter knowledge that would have led to the truth of her legacy.

But what was his place in this galaxy now, as both the only living Jedi and as the son of a Jedi who had turned Sith? Did he have a place? Certainly when the Alliance hierarchy learned the truth of his lineage, they would not be as quick to dissociate Anakin from Vader as he had. Furthermore, the traditional role of the Jedi – "guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic," Ben had said – did not sit entirely well with Luke. Using Jedi powers to serve as unquestioning guardians of any government seemed dangerous and wrong. That was just one of the Old Ways that he assumed Ben and Yoda would expect him to follow. But whatever one said about the good or the ill of the old order of things and their monastic commitments, they had ultimately led to the near-extinction of the Jedi and a galactic civil war. That alone gave him reason to question the wisdom of accepting the Old Ways.

At the same time, he didn't truly believe himself wise enough or advanced enough as a Jedi to start making sweeping pronouncements about the future of a Jedi Order. For all that he had said to Leia about training her, he wasn't even sure there should be a Jedi Order. Maybe the Jedi Order should die with him. Maybe his desire for Leia to accept whatever training he could provide was just his attempt to feel less alone. Because whatever else the Jedi were, they were most definitely alone – except, somehow, for Anakin, who had either never formed any attachment other than a physical one with whomever their mother might be or he had broken one of the foremost strictures of the Old Ways by developing a deep romantic attachment. Which brought him back to Leia, who would promptly gouge Luke's eyes out if he ever floated the idea her of giving up Han for life as a Jedi. He agreed with her about that. That rule about attachments…it seemed like something that probably caused more Jedi to be lonely enough to betray the Old Ways with clandestine relationships than to serve any real purpose, although Luke acknowledged that perhaps his feelings on the matter were an attempted justification for his own desires.

It was too much to wrap his head around, especially with everything that had just happened. He closed his eyes, concentrated on slowing his breathing and his thoughts, and surrendered to the light of the Force.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Luke had expected his meditations to be among the most peaceful he'd ever known. The dark shadows of Vader and Palpatine that had always haunted his meditations were gone. Their absence, however, only cleared the path for further insights into the Force, and his thoughts quickly turned fretful as that insight told him something remained profoundly unbalanced. The tendrils of the Dark Side reached out into his consciousness, as strong as ever. That was impossible; its two strongest adherents no longer lived.

He allowed his mind to gently probe further…

_All you fear awaits you on Coruscant, son of Anakin. As do I…_

Luke struggled to hold on to the meditation, trying to let go of his racing thoughts, knowing that by pushing too hard he was not allowing the Force to speak to him. Those words that had come out of the void, directed specifically to him, could only have come from another Force-sensitive. One aligned with the Dark Side.

"Hey, Luke, you okay?"

Luke's eyes snapped open when Han called to him from the Falcon's gangway. Adept as Luke had become with the Force, he found Han's presence nearly impossible to sense.

"Han, you know you are the only person in the galaxy who can sneak up on me?"

Han smirked. "I'm real quiet-like that way."

"More like a black hole in the Force." Luke smiled as Han's eyebrows furrowed in an attempt to come up with a suitable response. "I suspect it has something to do with your exquisitely calibrated defense mechanisms."

"Or maybe because there's some tricks and nonsense mixed in with this Force thing." Han lowered himself to the ground next to Luke.

Luke smiled. Han had been baiting him with that one for years, but the baiting had become less pointed and more tradition as Han saw Luke grow strong as a Jedi. "You know, lowering those defenses a little and letting your friends sense you might get you outta trouble someday."

"Or get me killed," Han replied with a full-on grin. "And when have I ever needed anybody to get me out of trouble?"

The men laughed. Both of them knew they'd needed the other – and Leia – to get them out of trouble more times than they could count.

"How long have I been out here?" Luke asked. "I tend to lose track of time—"

"'Bout an hour. Thought I'd check on you."

"I'm fine." Luke thanked his stars that Han didn't tend to probe further than the answer given. "Leia okay?"

Han nodded. "Sleeping. Pretty much fell asleep standing up."

"Good. She needed it." Luke tossed a sideways glance at his friend. "So, you going to tell me what you said or did to make me sense all those emotions from her?"

"You're going to need to stop poking around there, kid, or you might see things you got no business seeing."

Luke refused to be dissuaded. "I won't be put off by the vague nausea you just caused me. What did you do?"

"Asked her to marry me."

Luke wasn't quite sure, but he thought he saw a bit of a blush on his friend's cheeks. He didn't need to use the Force to know what the answer had been; he'd known for nearly a year how Leia would answer that question, but he was more than happy to play dumb to annoy Han.

"So is she sane or battle-mad?" Luke asked. "What did she say?"

"Yes, of course." Han's cocky grin made another appearance, but it wasn't quite as cocky as usual. "After we went through the ten thousand reasons why she thought I deserved better than a life with Darth Vader's daughter."

Luke waited for Han to continue, but he'd fallen silent and was studying the forest floor. "If you think there is any part of her that doesn't want to marry you, you're dead wrong, Han."

"It's not that. Although any woman who doesn't hesitate a little about marrying me might be a little crazy."

Luke laughed. "Can you say that again so I can take a holo of it and show it to her over and over, forever?"

"Luke, I'm worried about her." Han said quietly.

"Yeah, me too."

"She's been through too much. This last one – Vader – Luke, that could haunt everything the both of you do for the rest of your lives. There's already enough ghosts hauntin' her."

"I know." Luke nodded. "And I haven't handled this whole revelation as well as I might have."

Han shrugged. "Don't think there really is a good way to handle it."

"I might be giving Anakin too much credit," Luke acknowledged.

"Yeah, probably—" Han hesitated.

"What is it?"

"I've been beat up, blaster burned, and stabbed with a vibroblade by more kreffin' jackwads than I can even remember, but they always had a reason for it. Until tonight, I didn't think Vader had any reason for torturing me – other than his being a giant pile of bantha kest."

Luke saw the mulish look Han gave him, daring an argument about whether or not Vader was indeed bantha kest, but Luke wasn't inclined to argue. The events on Bespin were something Han really hadn't spoken about with Luke, other than to once shrug them off as just more evidence that Vader was a "sick bastard who got off on hurtin' people." Tonight, though, Luke sensed that Han had more to say.

"I didn't know…," Han continued, "Leia never told me that Vader had her locked up next to the torture chamber. Would've tried harder to keep from screamin' if I knew…but Luke, Vader knew he had us. He could have handed me over to Fett and dragged Leia off to detention in a half-second. He didn't need to force us to sit in that dining room for hours while he let Leia in on everything he knew about my past. He could've thrown anybody from Lando to some Cloud City jailbird into the carbonite to test it for you—"

Luke saw where Han was going.

"Let's say I'm buying that he's your father, and he didn't know she was his daughter. He could have killed her, imprisoned her, left her stranded on Bespin. But Vader did everything he did to me on Cloud City to break her. He thought that was more important to than killing us. Why?"

Luke shook his head. He saw Han's logic, but he couldn't see the reason for what Vader had done either.

"I'm wonderin' if…" Han didn't really want to get too far into this Force thing that he was still a little unsure about, but he needed to get Luke thinking about this. "I'm wondering if he sensed she was strong in the Force. I mean, if you have it, could someone like Vader tell and use it to destroy her? And if that's true, how can I possibly protect her from –"

"Han?" Leia called from the Falcon.

Luke and Han exchanged glances, silently agreeing that their conversation was over for now.

"Down here, sweetheart," Han called.

She hurried down the gangway and frowned as she saw Han and Luke sitting together.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothin'. I couldn't sleep and you were totally out so I figured I'd check on Luke here." He patted the ground next to him, inviting her to join them.

Leia remained standing, arms folded across her chest. Han groaned inwardly; he'd seen that stance too many times before. It inevitably meant someone was about to be interrogated. Usually him. But this time she was focused on Luke.

"I mean what's wrong with Luke. What is it?"

Luke quickly closed off his mind so she couldn't unconsciously probe any further. Her insight shouldn't have shocked him; she'd read his feelings many times before. Until very recently he'd attributed it to her diplomatic training. Now he attributed it to something else entirely, but she wasn't ready to hear it.

"Wrong?" Luke looked up at her with those innocent blue eyes of his. "You're marrying this nerf-herder, that's what's wrong." He hoped she bought the lie. She usually didn't, but he wasn't sure he wanted to disclose what he'd felt in his meditations just yet.

Leia sighed as she sat down next to Han. "How come I get the feeling I'm not going to be the one to tell _anybody_ that we're engaged?"

"Maybe because I already sliced into the Rebellion's encrypted channels and spread the word far and wide?" Han grinned.

She almost believed him. It sounded a little too much like something Han would do. Thankfully, he winked at her just before she decided to get up and check.

A familiar Wookiee roar rang through the forest.

"Over here, Chewie!" Han called.

Luke shifted positions and raised an eyebrow at his sister. "I'm not sure I approve of this, you know. As your brother, I think it might be my job to protect you from shady characters like the General."

"You can try, kid," Han drawled. "But you already lost here." He lay down and rested his head on Leia's knee, just in time to see her eyes go wide at his comment. She'd never really acknowledged the earlier rivalry between Han and Luke over her. Given everything she'd just learned in the last twenty-four hours, she didn't want to start now. But she had a suspicion her brother and her betrothed weren't going to let it go – ever.

"I didn't lose," Luke replied calmly. "Circumstances beyond my control gave me no choice but to forfeit."

Han burst out laughing at Luke's characterization of their rivalry. The Princess was flushing furiously above him, no doubt appalled that they were joking about something that bordered on disturbing. Or maybe, Han considered, crossed the border of disturbing by a pretty long margin. He was sure Leia would soon unleash some sort of sassmouth comment that would chop them down like overripe Septonian wheat but, hell, it was worth it. Plus, it was good to see that Luke could let go of that Jedi gravitas he was carrying around and make a joke…even they were playing this game entirely to keep Leia's mind off her troubles.

Luke looked at an increasingly red Leia. He figured he should probably say something nice to forestall an eruption …nah. He turned to Han. "Well, at least this explains why my feelings were always so confused and complicated. Yours, of course, were absurdly uncomplicated. As usual."

Leia looked from her brother to her fiancé, who both wore smugly self-satisfied looks. Both also expected her to soon shift from embarrassment to fury. But somehow she didn't much feel like being furious. She wanted the three of them – four, she amended, as Chewie came crashing out of the woods – to sit here talking like this for hours, as if there were no war, no battles left to fight, no tragedies and revelations to face, just the four of them sitting here being… a family, she realized. She had a family again.

"You know," Leia observed thoughtfully. "I'm starting to wonder why I gave either one of you a second glance. Let's face it, Wedge Antilles is probably a better catch than any of the males –"

**Except me** Chewie growled.

"—human males," Leia couldn't quite understand Chewie but she knew him well enough to get the drift, "here."

Han would have objected vociferously if he hadn't felt Leia's hand squeeze his shoulder as she spoke. "Nah," he replied. "Both of us are smarter 'n better-lookin' than Wedge."

**Not so** replied Chewie. A rude gesture from Han immediately followed.

"I'll have to agree with Han there," added Luke. "Even if you did stomp all over my heart when you told me you loved this moon-jockey."

Leia's heart sank a little at that. She remembered that day well. Telling Luke, although she had perfect clarity that it was the right thing to do (and in retrospect, boy, was it ever…), had been very difficult for her as she'd know that it would hurt him. "You weren't really so hurt…"

"Nah," Luke smiled, seeing Leia's consternation. "I felt oddly relieved and didn't really understand why. Besides, with everything that happened to me on Bespin, you could have told me you loved a Rancor and it probably wouldn't have registered."

**She did tell you she loved a Rancor, Luke** Chewie barked.

"You flyin' yourself home, Chewie?" Han rejoined. "She's gonna marry this Rancor, you know."

Chewie smiled to himself. In his opinion, Leia was the greatest thing that ever happened to Han. All those good qualities that Han tried so desperately to hide as he scratched and clawed his way around the seedy underbelly of the galaxy to make a living and stay alive started sneaking out once Leia was in the picture. Chewie had always known Han had a heart as big as they came – he wouldn't be alive to have a life-debt to Han if he didn't – but until Leia turned up, he hadn't been at all sure that Han would let anyone see that good heart ever again. After all, his basic decency had ruined him and forced him into the underworld in the first place. What a messed-up galaxy. Despite his immeasurable pride in his friend, Chewie turned to Leia with a concerned woof, because Han would expect no less.

"No, she doesn't have a fever," Han snapped.

"I just remembered something," Luke said. "It did help heal my wounds when Leia told me that despite the fact that she loved you, she knew I was the better man."

"In what galaxy, junior?" Han grinned. He was truly enjoying himself here. So this was what it was like to have a family. He could learn to love this. He already _did _love this.

"Are you two going to spar this way for the rest of my life?" Leia asked.

"Yes," replied Han and Luke in unison, grinning at each other.

"Somehow, despite my better judgment," Leia mused, "I don't mind that very much at all."

"Good, because—" Han broke off as his chronometer buzzed insistently.

The others tensed. There was only one reason for an alert to come in over that channel.

"This is Solo," Han responded as he tapped the chron several times.

A hologram of a young Rebel office flickered to life before them. "General Solo, all troops are to report back to Home One at eleven hundred hours. New briefings will be held thereafter."

"No debrief on the Endor mission?" Han quizzed.

"No time, General," the officer replied before signing off.

"Well," sighed Han as he got up and helped Leia to her feet, "at least I'm not gonna have to tell them we almost ended up an Ewok's dinner."

"You know what this means," Leia said, trying to ignore the knot again forming in the pit of her stomach.

"Yep. We're goin' after Coruscant right away." Han turned to Chewie. "Chewie, find Lando. Make sure he's not passed out in some Ewok hut somewhere. He can fly Tydirium back. He's not flying my ship hung over."

**Right. Because no one's ever done that before** Chewie wuffled as he headed back into the forest.

"—Luke, you fly that hunk of junk you hijacked back to the fleet. We may need it since Tydirium's been compromised."

Luke nodded. "Right."

"And we all better get some rest. Up at oh-eight-hundred."

He turned to head back to the Falcon and noticed Leia wasn't following. She was once again planted firmly in front of Luke.

"I want to know what's wrong," she repeated.

"We're worried about you," Luke responded. It wasn't entirely a lie.

"Han is always worried about me. He sometimes forgets I've rescued him as many times as he's rescued me. But that's not what's bothering you. It's something new."

Luke looked affectionately at his sister. If she didn't think she had the powers that he had, she couldn't be more wrong. She'd seen right through his mask of jollity; it probably hadn't fooled her for a second.

"Kid, you might as well tell us what it is." Han rubbed his eyes. There was nothing to be done when Leia made it her mission to discover what you were hiding. You were going to tell her sooner, or you were going to tell her later, but you were going to tell her so you might as well get it over with.

Luke shrugged. "First, I want to apologize. I have no right to pressure you into accepting Anakin Skywalker. When Vader told me he was my father on Bespin, my reaction was to throw myself down an exhaust shoot. Partly it was to escape him. Partly, it was because if that evil creature was my father, I didn't care if I lived or died. You never saw anything other than that evil creature, Leia. So in a lot of ways, you're handling this better than I did."

"Thank you, Luke," Leia said quietly. "It is going to take me a long time to come to terms with this. If I ever do. But I don't have time for it now."

Han winced. There it was; she was compartmentalizing again. There were so many things she hadn't had time to grieve, and this was another.

"And that's not what's troubling you, in any event," Leia continued.

"You're right. When I was meditating tonight, it should have been peaceful. The Force should have been undisturbed." Luke hesitated. Again, he found himself in territory that Leia wouldn't quite understand and Han wouldn't quite buy. "But the Dark Side – it was active. It was roiling, it was strong. Just as strong as it was before Vader turned and Palpatine died."

Leia nodded. She didn't know what Luke sensed, but his senses had been unerring up to now.

"I think someone strong in the Dark Side is waiting for us on Coruscant."

"A Sith?" Leia asked.

"Couldn't be. There are always only two. And they're dead."

Luke looked between his sister and his friend. He expected the concern in Leia's eyes. What he didn't expect was the response he got from Han.

"Whatever you're seeing, Luke: we find it, we kill it, we win. Then we get to move on with our lives," Han said firmly. "Let's all get some sleep; sounds like we're going to need it."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The girl would be the key.

Essag pored over the damaged records he'd retrieved so many years ago from the ruined Jedi Temple. If he had divined her identity correctly, the girl would land on Coruscant when the Rebel fighters made their attack. She knew the Imperial Center well, better than any other young leader in the Alliance. Her years as a traitorous Senator guaranteed that.

He scanned his datapad once again. There they were; the records relating to Anakin Skywalker. The biostats seemed to be intact, despite the obvious efforts someone – Palpatine, perhaps, or Vader himself – had made to scrub Anakin Skywalker from Jedi history. Fortunate that Palpatine and Vader had become sloppy near the end, discussing Vader's son and Vader's feelings towards him while the Royal Guard remained within earshot in the Throne Room. Fortunate that the Royal Guard reported everything they heard to Essag, their former comrade. Most fortunate that when Vader arrived on the Death Star with his son, Essag had assumed the uniform of a Royal Guardsman and, although ordered out of the Throne Room by Palpatine once the Skywalkers arrived, remained close enough to easily reach out with the Force and hear the battle in the Throne Room. The death of Palpatine merely signaled to Essag that he should flee and take his rightful place as successor, but the revelation of a twin sister sparked his interest.

Lord Vader's biostats had always been conspicuous by their absence from the Imperial databases, but Palpatine insisted Vader's injuries and any weaknesses inherent in Vader's life support system always remain concealed. Essag quickly remedied the absence of Vader's genetics in the system by uploading those of Anakin Skywalker. The girl's biostats, of course, were easy enough to find. Her time as a prisoner on the first Death Star guaranteed that the Empire had collected all the information they could ever need. The mind probe required biostats to guarantee that any genetic flaws could be painfully exploited.

After typing his personal codes into the database, Essag waited impatiently as the calculations ran, and then…

There it was. The girl was indeed Lord Vader's daughter.

Essag laughed at the irony. The children of the most feared Sith Lord in the galaxy were the only surviving Jedi and one of the driving forces behind the Rebel Alliance. Had Palpatine and Vader known of the girl, they would not have failed so miserably. They wouldn't have focused their efforts on the Jedi Luke when the girl was strong in the Force, but untrained, with weaknesses ripe for exploitation. If Vader's records from Bespin could be believed, the girl had formed a strong attachment to a lowlife smuggler that Vader had tried to exploit. And the Jedi's feelings for her were strong – Essag had sensed how close the Jedi had come to falling to the Dark Side at Vader's mere threat of turning his sister.

A familiar presence roused him from his thoughts. He used to bow down before this presence. No more. Now he could reveal to his former "master" the truth of their relationship.

"Sidious," he called out. "I feel your presence."

Palpatine's force ghost materialized before Essag. "You no longer kneel before your master, Darth Wraack?"

"I have no master, Sidious."

Palpatine silently evaluated his apprentice. True enough, his Sith ghost held no power over Wraack.

"What was your intent, Sidious?" Essag questioned. "Skywalker, Vader, myself. Were you abandoning the Rule of Two or were the three of us to battle to the death for the privilege of remaining your apprentice?"

"The Rule of Two would have remained," Palpatine admitted. "Lord Vader had served his purpose. Whether you or young Skywalker was stronger in the Force, I had yet to discover."

"You compare me to a barely-trained boy, Lord Sidious?"

"I compare you to the son of the Chosen One, Darth Wraack."

Essag shook his head. "The 'Chosen One' betrayed you. And the prophecy was not fulfilled." He could sense it; surely Luke Skywalker, wherever he was, could also sense that the Force was not in balance. "In any event, fulfillment of the prophecy was not to be desired."

"Why do you think I held the Chosen One so close, Darth Wraack?" Palpatine rejoined. "His powers were limited by his injuries, but the prophecy remained. He had to be watched."

"He should have been destroyed."

Palpatine nodded. "I do not deny that now. But your actions today reveal that, perhaps, you likewise should have been destroyed."

"Your Empire is corrupt, Sidious," Essag replied. "It needs to be cleansed."

"A Sith does not reveal his powers so baldly. The men you destroyed today would have been useful servants of the Empire. The patience to hold back and reveal yourself only when circumstances are right can be the greatest weapon of the Sith."

Essag smiled. "Perhaps it is time I reveal my use of this 'greatest weapon.'

"What do you mean, Wraack?"

"I admit I have long been a bit surprised that you never recognized the young boy whom you thought you had killed the night you took Master Plagueis' life. Perhaps because when I arrived at the Imperial Academy eight years later, I had become strong enough in the Dark Side to shield my identity entirely. Due to my…patience."

Sidious started. It was not possible. He had disposed of the boy long before he had ended Plagueis' life.

Essag had been only ten on the night of his Master's death, a poor servant boy Plagueis had hand-picked from among the slave glans of Mygeeto because in him Plagueis found a modest Force sensitivity. Obsessed with the science of the Force, Plagueis believed that although is attempts to use the Force to create new life had failed, he could certainly transfer his sensitivity and self to another in his continued attempts to achieve eternal life.

"As he lay dying, he began to transfer his being into me. First, the deep knowledge of and sensitivity to the Fore. This I accepted. And then he began to attempt to possess me. However, as he weakened – thanks to you, Sidious – I finished the job you began."

"You killed him…" breathed Sidious.

"I possessed his power, but I did not allow his person to possess me."

Of course, Plagueis had been incorrect in his belief that he'd failed in creating life through the Force. At the moment Plagueis lay dying, a young boy on backwater Tatooine was winning a podrace that would change the course of his life.

"Had Plagueis known about young Skywalker, I would not exist," mused Essag, continuing his tale. "Even he had his blind spots, as you well know. Thankfully, the Dark Spectres of Moraband, who called me to themselves so that I could complete my training, do not."

"A fool's errand," snapped Plagueis. "The spectres are no more than a legend."

Essag chuckled; Sidious' words were angry, but tinged with fear. "Believe as you will, Sidious. It's of no matter now."

"The future of the Sith now lies in your hands, Wraack. What do you intend?"

"Where shall I begin, Lord Sidious? What remains of Coruscant after the battle shall be forsaken; the Imperial Capital shall be moved to Moraband. The Rule of Two shall be abandoned, and Dark Jedi and Sith will be trained to serve the new empire – the Sith Empire."

"Grand plans for one with no apprentice," Sidious murmured.

"I will shortly have an apprentice. Skywalker has felt my presence. He will soon arrive on Coruscant with the Rebels, I am sure."

Sidious' mad cackle echoed through Essag's chambers. "You're mistaken, Wraack. Skywalker the Jedi cannot be turned."

"I don't intend to turn Skywalker, Sidious," Essag replied calmly. "I intend to turn his sister."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Arriving in the briefing room ahead of Han, Luke, and Lando, Leia scanned the assembly, trying to hide her shock at the many faces that were missing. Admiral Gonsar, Ackbar's right hand, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Commander Kantri, the female leader of Blue Squadron, to whom Leia had become close during that horrible mission to Ord Mantell. She had heard that Commander Wilon of Gold Squadron, a sabacc buddy of Han's, had not survived either.

General Rieekan made his way over to her, a wistful smile on his face. "A lot of room in here, isn't there, your Highness?"

Leia nodded tersely. "Too much room. And too many tired."

Rieekan sighed. "The argument for attacking now seemed compelling to many." He noted that Leia was gazing at him, waiting for him to say more. He lost the staring contest. "I was outvoted, Princess."

"Carlist," Leia replied quietly, "they must have their reasons for attacking now. We'll do what we need to do."

While she spoke the words that were expected of her, she didn't quite believe them. A terrible darkness had taken hold in her mind of the middle of the night, a fear beyond her now-familiar nightmares about Alderaan's destruction and Bespin and Jabba's Palace. It was the darkness that she had always felt pinging at the back of her mind during her days as a Senator on Coruscant. Too often, while in her chambers in the Alderaanian consulate, she would wake shivering in the middle of the night, quaking at an overwhelming and seemingly irrational sense of death surrounding her. That feeling was now back, combined with her long-held suspicion that she probably wouldn't survive this war. She pushed the thoughts out of her mind; it was just another thing on the long list if things she had no time to consider at the moment. Whatever happened, she had a job to do.

"Princess, you alright?" Carlist questioned.

"Yes, I'm fine. And Carlist – call me Leia."

The Alderaanian general smiled. "That, your Highness, is something I don't think I will ever be able to do."

The assembled officers quieted, taking their seats as Mon Mothma entered the briefing room, accompanied by Ackbar and Madine. As always, Mon spoke quietly but with such authority that she commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

"We have word that the upper echelons of the Imperial brain trust are in disarray," she reported. "Although Ben-ka Essag has been named Emperor, as required by Palpatine's Orders of Succession, our sources inform us that he does not enjoy the undivided loyalty of the Empire's highest ranks. We know certain of our sources to be compromised, but we have heard rampant rumors that Essag has already executed a number of high-ranking officers, and that Imperial forces are fighting revolts on Isithorne and Corellia."

Han felt the squeeze of Leia's hand at the mention of Corellia. _Damn right, Corellia was rebelling_, Han thought. The second they could throw off an oppressor, they'd try, because if there was one thing that marked a Corellian, it was an independent streak ten parsecs wide.

"This is Emperor Essag." Mon pressed a button on her holoremote and an image of Ben-ka Essag filled the center of the room. Luke felt his nerves tense at the sight. This was the man who called out to him through his meditation last night. This man, Luke was sure, was a Sith.

"Little is known of him other than that he served in the Royal Guard for nearly twenty years before becoming Grand Moff of the Coruscant system. Therefore, he is well-trained, a true believer, and more than willing to be deadly. General Madine?"

"Feel like I just saw this show," Han muttered to Chewie, who growled in agreement.

"We will once again have to press the battle on two fronts," Madine said. "This time, on Coruscant itself, with ground forces and low-atmosphere fighters in the transport lanes of the Senate and Palace Districts, and in the Coruscant system above the planetary shield. We have learned that the Imperial Fleet – including the Outer Rim Fleet – has been ordered to redeploy to Coruscant. They are on their way."

Han and Lando exchanged glances. They'd both had run-ins with the Outer Rim Fleet – parts of it, anyway. The rumors about the size and firepower of that fleet as a whole ranged from the ridiculous to the terrifying.

"General Solo, General Calrissian, you will lead our attack on the Imperial Fleet, using plans developed by Admiral Ackbar."

Leia looked up at Han with concern. He'd just led an attack, and, whether he admitted it or not, he was still fighting the lingering effects of hibernation sickness that the medics said could last for as much as six months. "Taking a nap," hadn't been part of Han's vocabulary before Bespin; for the past three months, it had been one of his favorite phrases.

"Our low-atmosphere and ground forces will be commanded by Generals Rieekan and Dodonna. We will also have need of an officer familiar with the Palace District of the planet and the Imperial Palace. Therefore, Princess Leia, you will be working in conjunction with General Rieekan on the ground."

Leia felt the blood drain from her face. She would be separated from Han and Luke during this battle, and she would be back on that hideous planet. Still, she dug her nails sharply into Han's hand when he opened his mouth to protest.

"Stop," she hissed at him. "Stop." She nodded to General Madine. "Yes, General."

Madine inclined his head slightly. "The ground leadership will meet with me at 1400 in Con 2. The aerial leadership will meet with Admiral Ackbar in Con 4 at the same time. Dismissed."

He turned to exit with Mon Mothma and Ackbar, feeling with every step the burn of Solo's angry glare. Madine understood the anger, but there was nothing to be done. He couldn't sacrifice their best pilot in this battle; it had been a calculated risk to send Solo to Endor and now, with their fleet depleted, Madine needed Solo in the air. Nor could he afford to keep the Princess, the only Rebel leader other than Mon who had lived in the government districts of Coruscant and knew the Imperial Palace, off the ground. General Solo would unfortunately have to deal with it.

"Han—" Leia turned to him.

Han was already on his feet and hurrying out of the room in the direction of the Falcon, Chewie close on his heels. Leia rushed after him, but Rieekan stopped her, looking pained.

"I didn't know," Rieekan admitted. "Princess, if I had known they were going to send you into this bloodbath with us—"

"They're right, General. I do know the government districts of Coruscant better than anyone in the Alliance. It makes perfect sense." She felt nauseous at the very thought of it, but it did make perfect military sense. "But a certain General is very unhappy at the moment, and I think I may need to speak to him—"

"Princess," Carlist grabbed her arm as she stepped away, before realizing that he'd just broken both protocol and, likely, several Alderaanian laws by roughly grasping a royal like that. "Pardon, Princess."

"Leia. What is it?"

Rieekan hesitated. "You know – you must know – that Mon respects Han's skills as a fighter, a pilot, and a leader, but –"

"But she's adamantly opposed to our relationship. Yes, she's made that very clear to me," Leia still remembered Mon's anger with her when, after Bespin, Leia informed the Alliance leadership that along with her missions for them, she would be dedicating herself to the search for Han for as long as it took to save him. Mon's words, questioning her loyalty to the Alliance and her understanding of her duties as the leader of the Alderaanian remnant while displaying an open contempt for Han – contempt that Leia couldn't deny may have been modeled on Leia's own behavior from briefings to Mon about her early missions with the Corellian smuggler who had agreed to freelance with the Alliance - had wounded Leia deeply and had not changed her mind one bit. After a sleepless night, Leia had left with Luke to begin the search the next morning. The rift between Leia and her former mentor in in the Senate had not even begun to heal.

"In this aspect of my life, Mon has no role to play whatsoever. I'm not for sale to the most strategically important prince in the galaxy, no matter how much Mon or the Alliance or the Alderaanian remnant would like me to be. Han and I will be together and they will have to make their peace with that fact. Feel free to share that with anyone who asks."

"I'm on your side, Princess, and I've always been on Han's side. I'm just telling you that Mon would be more than happy to have his head if he chooses you over the Alliance in this battle. He's played every card right since you rescued him, and he can't toss a skifter into the deck now."

Sabacc references were usually lost on Leia, but she understood exactly what Carlist was saying. She nodded.

"I may need to call you for backup," she smiled grimly as she headed toward the Falcon.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Luke quietly exited the briefing room, relieved to see Leia too wrapped up in her conversation with Rieekan and, likely, a subsequent fight with Han, to notice his departure. He was pretty sure that Leia would be just as unhappy with what he was planning to do as she would with whatever Han was plotting, so better that he handle this alone.

He came to the door of Mon Mothma's office on Home One. Locked. He sighed and waved his hand over the door, which slid open to reveal a very surprised young officer in the anteroom in the process of unholstering his blaster.

Luke smiled. "I'm no danger to anyone here."

"Commander – Jedi – Skywalker." He holstered his blaster.

"I must speak to the leaders."

"They're in final planning before the briefs. They have ordered that they not be disturbed."

Luke did not want to employ his Force skills on the young officer. There was something both unfair and show-offy about manipulating people and things to his will solely because he could, even when his cause was important and just. He compromised by using the Force to open the comm channel to Mon's office so that those inside could hear him.

"Please, Lieutenant," Luke continued. "I wouldn't be here unless I had something important to discuss with them."

"I'm sorry, sir, but it will have to wait."

"What I have to say could significantly impact our chances on Coruscant."

The officer frowned. "And how would you know this?"

Luke didn't let the officer rile him, although he was starting to feel like he was negotiating with an old Toydarian junk trader he remembered from his days back on Tattooine. "I am a Jedi, Lieutenant. Sometimes I have an insight."

The door of the conference room slid open, revealing Mon Mothma standing before him. "You may come in, Commander Skywalker."

Luke entered to expectant looks from Madine and Ackbar. Calling on both his Jedi training and the few brief pointers Leia had given him on negotiating tactics over the years – those tactics that didn't involve thermal detonators – Luke nodded respectfully to the leadership.

"Jedi Skywalker," Ackbar inclined his bulbous head in acknowledgement. "You said you had information?"

"I do, Admiral," Luke responded, treading carefully after sensing their extreme tension. "I have reason to believe that the new Emperor is, like his predecessor, a Sith Lord."

Mon exchanged surprised glances with her officers. "We have heard no such thing, and we have significant information on his background."

"We haven't even heard a hint of a rumor of this nature, Commander," Madine added.

"The Sith do not advertise their existence unless it's of the utmost benefit to them," Luke replied evenly. "Essag is a Sith and he is on Coruscant. He is aware of my presence and expects to face me there."

Mon studied Skywalker for a moment. She didn't know him all that well. She understood from Leia that Skywalker had received Jedi training from Master Yoda on the backwater planet of Dagobah. Her surprise at hearing Master Yoda's name after so many years overcame her skepticism, convincing her that Skywalker was indeed a Jedi Knight. She also knew, from gossip within the Alliance, that the Jedi had strong feelings for the Princess, which had not been reciprocated beyond a close friendship. Perhaps Skywalker was reacting to his assignment with the Rogues instead of planetside. She had expected any difficulties on this account to be directed at Madine by General Solo.

"You will not be planetside," Ackbar reminded him. "You will be with Rogue Squadron."

"I'm sorry, Admiral, but that can't be," Luke responded. "If a Sith is on Coruscant, my place, as a Jedi, is also there."

Madine, angered, stood. Like most Corellians, he put little faith in the Force and those who could claim to control it. He put even less faith in young pilots insisting that they would not do their job. "According to your own datalogs, you abandoned the mission on Endor to face Vader and Palpatine directly –"

Luke raised a hand to stop Madine. "As I stated, my presence endangered the mission. I had General Solo's agreement—" That wasn't strictly true, of course, but he doubted that Han would disagree with his framing of his departure, especially if it annoyed those in command.

"I'm afraid we're in no position to complain about the outcome of Commander Skywalker's journey to the Death Star, Crix," Mon reminded the General.

"There is no evidence to support Commander Skywalker's claims of defeating both Vader and Palpatine," Madine replied.

"I didn't claim to defeat Palpatine," Luke reminded him. "Vader defeated Palpatine. Palpatine would have killed me easily."

Madine shook his head. They were wasting time.

"I'd like to hear why you believe Essag to be a Sith," Mon interjected.

With a nod, Luke began to explain the Jedi commitment to meditation in the Force, and his experience of the disturbance in the Force during his meditation last night. He tried to ignore, not altogether successfully, Madine's eye roll. Luke thought that was a specialty of Han's, but maybe it was an annoying ethnic trait all Corellians shared. Luckily, Ackbar and Mon – both of whom had collaborated with Jedi during the fall of the Republic – seemed to be listening intently as he described Essag's ability to reach out and challenge him.

"And you need to take him up on this challenge?" Madine scowled.

"No. I have no need to prove myself," Luke replied. "But I do believe that sending Rebel forces in without a Jedi present would put them at a dangerous disadvantage."

Mon sighed. Luke quickly glanced into her mind and discovered that she still believed Luke had designed this gambit solely to protect Leia. Which was, in some respects, true, but not at all for the reasons Mon suspected.

"With respect," Luke said to her. "My feelings for Leia are not at all what you believe."

Mon raised an eyebrow. The Jedi had used his powers to look into her mind. She didn't like that at all.

"But Leia is one of the reasons I do need to be on Coruscant," he admitted.

"Explain." Mon folded her arms.

Luke couldn't tell Mon the whole story; he and Leia would need to discuss and agree upon the particulars of any revelation of their shared history. In any event, Mon wouldn't believe it if he blurted out that Leia was his sibling. But as he could sense Mon was as yet unmoved by his arguments, he needed to drop some kind of bombshell to nudge her in the right direction.

"Leia is an untrained Force-sensitive. I will leave the Alliance before I leave her at the mercy of a Sith Lord."

Mon's stunned silence was just the response he was looking for.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Leia arrived in the anteroom to find the Falcon's airlock invitingly open. To her surprise, the ship appeared to be powered-down as well. No way was she going to fall for this.

"Han," she called out. "I'm not stupid enough to board the ship and let you kidnap me."

Inside the Falcon, Han, inputting hurriedly on a datapad, cursed. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of that himself; he really was getting soft. He got up and walked over to the top hatch, punching the button to activate the lift that he now hated. Everytime he rode that lift down from the airlock, he had to struggle not to hyperventilate as memories of being lowered into the carbon freeze on Bespin and the searing pain of the moment that the carbonite bonded to his skin came racing back. He'd have to figure out some way to replace the damn thing, or least make it a square lift instead of a rectangular one.

"If I was going to kidnap you, Leia," Han answered gruffly as the lift finished its journey, "I would have been hidin' out here with my blaster unholstered while you yelled at my empty ship."

"Right. Because I'm really worried that you'd shoot me." She wasn't quite sure he wouldn't stun her if he truly thought he was doing the right thing. Admittedly, she wasn't quite sure she wouldn't stun him in the same circumstances, and one look at his face told her that while she may have had the specifics of his plan wrong, a reckless action was brewing. "Han, I'm far from thrilled about this myself—"

"I'm quitting." Han burst out. "I'm out." He waved the datapad. "This is my resignation from the Alliance. If they don't change their minds and send me to down there with you, I'm out, and I'll find a way to get to Coruscant on my own."

With her horrible sense of foreboding about this battle, she wanted him with her almost as much as he wanted to be there. She relied on having him by her side on dangerous missions more than she'd admit, and she had a suspicion he felt the same about her. But she couldn't let him do this.

"Han, they're not going to change their mind, and they're not going to accept you resigning your commission, and you know it," she snapped.

"Well, that's their choice. One or the other."

"Don't be a nerf-herder. You know that's not true. Given that you just took the loyalty oath LAST WEEK, I think we both know what would happen."

Han looked away, silently cursing the galaxy. He'd been perfectly happy as an unofficial member of the Alliance. He never would have officially joined up if he didn't feel like he needed to prove to Leia that he was in this with her for good. Now look at what had happened; this was what being a joiner instead of a loner got you.

"You go AWOL and they'll throw you in detention. Where do we go from there, huh?" She remembered Rieekan's statement, knowing that Mon might be all too happy to do just that.

Han caught her momentary distraction and looked at Leia suspiciously. "What aren't you tellin' me?"

"Nothing, Han, it's nothing," she lied. "I'm just worried about what you're going to do. Han, please, let's just win this battle and then try to move on with our lives-"

He shook his head. "I can't just leave you down there. It's going to be…they're not going to care who or what they have to destroy to win that battle, and your Rebellion is planning a siege without enough troops for a siege…Chalysa, Magasar, Dornat…sieges always, always have mass casualties."

Leia saw the haunted look in his eyes. His understanding of military history and strategy was one of the many things she'd learned about him on the long sublight voyage to Bespin when there were hours and hours to do nothing…well, almost nothing…but talk. What Han didn't yet know was that, during those terrifying months when Boba Fett didn't deliver Han directly to Jabba but instead seemed to disappear without a trace, she'd sliced into his records – the real ones, hidden under layers and layers of fakery that Han had added over the years to protect himself - looking for any clue as to where Fett may have taken him. She'd discovered he'd been one of the standouts in his class at the Imperial Academy before his better angels got him thrown out. She still half suspected that his dubious Basic grammar was originally a ruse that became a habit.

"I can take care of myself, Han," she reminded him.

"I know you can. I just want to have your back."

His words almost made her relent. Almost. "And I want to have yours. But that's not the way this one's going to be, is it?"

"It is if I leave this party and go free agent."

"That will ruin any chance we have at a future."

"Yeah," Han frowned at her. "So would you dyin' in this battle."

Leia closed her eyes. So very like him to put his cards on the table like that. "Han, please, don't do this. I understand why you want to resign but -"

"Leia, I'm not ready to make you any promises about this," Han said quietly. "I ain't lettin' you walk into a nightmare. I'd be happy to resign and take my chances."

"But you don't have to," came the voice from behind them. "Because I already have."

They turned quickly to see Luke walking toward them, as unperturbed as ever.

"What did you do?" Leia asked, annoyed.

"My place is where the Sith is, Leia. Not with Rogue Squadron."

"And?" Leia glared at Luke. She didn't want to say that she could "sense" that Luke had told Alliance leadership more, but she sensed exactly that.

"I told Mon that I believed you were an untrained Force-sensitive and I would not leave you alone near a Sith. That didn't change Mon…or Madine's mind about my orders, so I resigned my commission and Ackbar suggested that in that case I should go to Coruscant. They have no power over me," he looked from Leia to Han. "The term I promised them is long since up. And I can't - I won't – be a Jedi sworn in service to a government – any government - anyway. With all the things I still have to figure out, I'm pretty sure of that one now."

Leia didn't disagree with that, and maybe having Luke with her would calm Han down to the point where he wouldn't do something crazy.

"I know this isn't what you ideally want, Han, but—" Luke started.

"It's better than nothing," Han huffed. "A little."

"Once again, I can protect myself," Leia reminded them both.

"No, Leia, you can't," Luke replied calmly. "Not in the presence of a Sith."

Leia eyed Luke balefully. That was a supremely unhelpful comment, because she was sure it redoubled Han's conviction that he had to go to Coruscant. Even if Han was 0-for-1 in his run-ins with Sith, she was sure he would conveniently forget that.

"I guess we're all going to have to do what we feel is right. Now, I have a briefing to go to." She turned and left the anteroom, hoping against hope that Han would come to his senses.

"She's right, you know," Luke said. "If you break your agreement with them—"

"I know, kid."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Nothin' until after I go to this briefing and find out how Hutt-brained the plan is. Then we'll see." Han trudged towards the exit, his shoulders slumped in what looked to Luke like a sign of tired defeat. Luke couldn't remember a time he'd seen his friend so conflicted. Maybe there was some sense in the Jedi rule against attachments after all.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Deep in thought, Leia sat down on the cushioned bench that doubled as a sitting and dining area in her tiny quarters on Home One. Amazing how everything had changed in such a short time; a year ago, anyone who had bothered to ask would have heard that she'd never value anything or anyone as much as she valued the Rebellion. She had been willing, over and over, to give her life for it. But now, when she was marching into the belly of the beast, the martyr complex Han had more than once accused her of having no longer held her in any thrall. _Perfect timing_, she thought wryly.

The plans laid out before them in the briefing which, thankfully, Rieekan insisted Luke attend if he planned on landing on Coruscant, were sound but, as usual, extremely risky. An entirely urbanized planet, Coruscant had for thousands of years lacked the capacity to sustain itself. Everything from basic necessities like food to luxury items to satisfy the bankers, counselors, lobbyists, government officials and, now, the Imperial elite, had to be imported. Each day a steady stream of supply freighters punched in their pre-vetted Imperial access codes, submitted to inspection at one of the four orbiting checkpoints, and, once cleared, entered the atmosphere through the four small windows in Coruscant's planetary shield that the checkpoints controlled.

Naturally, not all the shippers were Imperial allies. Some had no loyalties to either side, and the Alliance had bought their support, hoping this day would come. Others had turned recently due to increases in Imperial taxes and import duties. Still others were Alliance members deeply undercover. Hundreds of Alliance low-atmosphere fighters were already on the planet, hidden away, thanks to delivery by the largest freighters. Tomorrow, thousands of Alliance troops and more fighters would be transported in three ZT-1200 freighters, each nearly as large as a Star Destroyer. They would take each control of three of the four Imperial checkpoints and slice into the Imperial computers to open the shields momentarily and let themselves in. Hopefully, they'd accomplish this quietly and the Imperial government on Coruscant would not be alerted to their presence. Mon Mothma, knowing of the compromised agents within the Imperial government, had informed these agents that the Rebellion's attack would be immediate, massive, and directly upon the Palace District, but instead, the freighters would land at the Central Landing Platforms, a shipping complex ten miles from the Palace. Therethey would wait until the order to attack was given, and then they would fan out in teams all over the government districts. However, before one of the freighters landed, a sleek Tuelimi shuttle, favored by the Imperial elite, would break off from the freighters and head for the landing platforms in the Palace District, where Rieekan, Luke, Leia, and a Palace Attack Team that had been training for an attack on the Royal Guard for over a year would access the complex. There they would hunt down the new Emperor, whom they believed would oversee the battle from the Imperial Palace, either from Defense Command or his heavily fortified throne room, and take him (preferably alive, but dead would do) and control of the Palace itself.

Palace. Leia snorted; a palace had beauty and elegance. No matter who inhabited it, a palace belonged to all the people of a star system. In ancient times, in times of famine or attack, a palace opened its doors to the people, sheltering them behind fortified walls, feeding them from its stores, and giving them hope for the future. Though palaces no longer played that protective role, Leia's education, upbringing, and innate sense of justice informed her deeply-held belief that a palace was not a symbol of privilege as much as a promise of an obligation.

No, the Imperial Palace was no palace. It was a vicious act of mockery, built on the footprint of the Jedi Temple, destroyed when Palpatine had seized control of the corrupt and dying Old Republic. In one of his more painful ironies, he had retained only the five ancient Valthusian columns adorning the Temple. Those columns, symbolizing freedom, peace, justice, comradeship, and, the largest, the will of the Force, were nearly five thousand years old.

On her first visit to the Palace, the day of her presentation to Palpatine's throne as the new junior Senator from Alderaan, she had an overwhelming desire to tear down the desecrated columns stone by stone. She recalled her entrance on the arm of her father and the oppressive sense of evil that seemed to permeate every block of black Ketor marble. Like so many sensations she had on Coruscant, she couldn't quite describe it, but the chill of fear came from something separate from the presence of the dark heart of the Empire. Maybe Luke could help her understand it when they returned tomorrow.

Her ruminations turned to the throne room itself, where Red Guardsmen stood at attention on each balcony overlooking the throne, silently observing Leia and Bail as they walked the length of the hall to bow before Palpatine, with Leia in her simple white senatorial robes and Bail, in a brazen act of defiance, wearing the Organa family crown. He rarely wore it on Alderaan and knew very well that no one was to wear a symbol of supremacy in the Imperial throne room. But Palpatine had ignored Bail, instead gripping Leia's hand and looking at her with such intensity and for such a long time that Leia had been afraid she'd either look away, in a gesture that would be mistaken for obeisance, or yank her hand away and summon Palpatine's wrath. Fortunately, she had done neither, and Palpatine had eventually withdrawn his hand, his rheumy eyes shifting from Leia to her father as he left them with a warning:

"The House Organa would be well-advised to come to heel should they desire their adopted daughter to someday wear the crown of Alderaan."

Their adopted daughter…Leia wondered now about the argument she had with her father over whether they would attend the presentation. Bail had argued that they should decline, as Alderaan was an unwilling member of the Empire. Leia had insisted that their absence would call too much attention to two Senators who had every intent on engaging in treason, and the Alderaanian advisors had taken her side. Had Bail been protecting her, while protecting Alderaan from a revelation that could have brought down the monarchy? Had Palpatine realized who she was? And, if he did, had her stubborn demand to be presented to him doom Alderaan to its fate?

She pushed the thought aside; it couldn't be. Alderaan's destruction was a tactic Grand Moff Tarkin had been perfectly capable of conjuring up on his own and then obtaining the Emperor's approval. Besides, Palpatine would have taken her prisoner then and there, or at least taken her prisoner at some point during the two years she spent on Coruscant, had he known.

But another question bothered her as she sat pondering her former life. Had her parents ever intended her to rule Alderaan? They had given every indication that they did, training her for a future as Queen of their people. Maybe that had been part of the ruse to protect her. Perhaps her father's keen interest in finding her a suitor had been purely practical, for given her true identity, ruling Alderaan would have been unthinkable. They had likely decided to encourage her to marry offworld, becoming Queen Consort to a people who would have had less objection to her heritage, if it became known, while at the same time making an important alliance. The crown would have passed to her cousin, Brin.

At least it now made some sense why her father liked that idiot Prince Isolder so much. She, like Luke, had been lied to by the people she loved from the day she was born. Even if they were lying for good reasons, she couldn't deny how much it hurt. They should have told her as soon as she was old enough to understand. They should have allowed her to find her own path.

"Oh! Mistress Leia!" Threepio, entering her quarters with more noise than was actually necessary, jolted her from her ruminations. "I had been informed you were in a briefing for the planned attack."

"It ended a while ago," Leia stood up, stretching. She wasn't in a mood to deal with Threepio. Another way she was becoming more like her betrothed, who was never in a mood to deal with Threepio.

"I was wondering, Your Highness, whether the services of Artoo and I will be necessary in this battle?"

_If a droid could be programmed to wring its hands_, Leia observed, _Threepio would be doing just that…all the time_.

"Yes, Threepio, you will be accompanying us to Coruscant. But you and Artoo will remain at a comm station between the landing platform and the Palace in case we need Artoo's slicing skills."

"Very well, Madam," Threepio began. "Although I wonder how my services—"

She knew what was coming; an argument that a droid programmed in etiquette and protocol would have little value on Coruscant. Perhaps this time he was right; Basic was the official language of the Empire and spoken by all on Coruscant, and protocol would be entirely beside the point. Perhaps Threepio should remain on Home One as only Artoo's wily skillset seemed necessary.

"Threepio, have you seen Han recently?" She'd promised herself that she would give Han until 20:00 to show up and tell her what he'd decided to do, and then she'd go find him, no matter what nefarious plans to keep her out of the battle he might have conjured up over the last few hours. She'd conjured up a few plans of her own, after coming to some conclusions about an internal struggle she'd been having since Han's rescue from Tatooine.

"Yes, madam, I saw General Solo in an airlock working on the Millennium Falcon's hull only a short while ago. It seems General Calrissian damaged the sensor array."

Whether Threepio's tone was reproachful or gossipy, Leia couldn't quite say, but she took the news of Han's tinkering with the Falcon as a good sign. Either he had already decided to play his assigned role in this battle or, as she'd seen him do so often over the years when something was troubling him, he'd retreated to his bucket of bolts to think it out. A bucket of bolts, Leia admitted, that she cared about now as an extension of her feelings for Han. As balky and ramshackle as the Falcon may be, it was also the only thing in the galaxy that had ever truly been his.

Until now, Leia added silently. She was his, and he was hers, and she intended to make that entirely clear to him, if her courage didn't desert her as it had, repeatedly, over the last several months. She checked her chronometer. 19:30. _Close enough_.

"Threepio, please inspect my utility belt and replace anything that was lost on Endor. Make sure my blaster is fully powered and doesn't need a new charge. After that you can shut down for the night and I'll consider whether you should remain here tomorrow or accompany Artoo to Coruscant."

With that, she exited the compartment quickly, leaving behind a flustered droid attempting to process the idea that Mistress Leia believed Artoo might function perfectly well without him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Han tossed Lando a pair of alluvial dampers. Although he didn't really blame Lando for the missing sensor array, he wasn't above playing on any guilt Lando felt about it in order to get the job done quickly, because repairing the switches leading to the now-lost sensor array was a three-person job.

"Tell me something, buddy," Lando said as he attempted to strip a frayed wire. "Are the Rebel plans always so reckless that they even give you and me second thoughts?"

Han nodded. "Pretty much. They say it's because they have to take their chances where they get 'em." He took the wire from Lando and reconnected it with a twist of the an electrowrench. "I think we're good now. Chewie – we good?"

A bark from the cockpit confirmed Han's analysis. Satisfied, he replaced the overhead panel.

"And you think…?" Lando prompted.

"I think Madine's days workin' for the Empire made him a little blasé about casualties. He doesn't seem to realize that he doesn't have unlimited blaster fodder here."

Engaging the top hatch, Leia heard Han's comment and sighed. She'd always had concerns about Crix and his too-high tolerance for Alliance casualties. Since no one in the leadership above her seemed as bothered as Leia was, she'd tried to brush it off as a Corellian thing, which, she supposed, was a very Alderaanian thing to do. It comforted her to hear Han giving voice to the same concerns.

"You comin' to the mess hall, Han?" Lando called as he wiped the compressor oil off his hands.

"No," Han replied. "I've gotta go make things right with Leia."

"No, you don't," Leia said, entering the hold. "Because things aren't wrong."

Han breathed a sigh of relief. "Then I guess I have to stay here and have dinner, because when there's food on the Falcon, Her Highnessness wouldn't be caught dead in the mess," he winked. That understanding between them dated to a time long before they stopped arguing at every opportunity.

**I'm all about quantity over quality** Chewie growled. ** Goin' to the mess. And so is Lando, whether he knows it or not** Chewie added with a pointed glare at Lando, whom Chewie figured was about to angle an invitation to stay.

"Right, mess it is," Lando added, following Chewie.

"Lando, wait, " Leia stopped him before he could exit. To Lando's surprise, she embraced him and kissed him on the cheek. Leia had warmed up slowly to him, which he couldn't hold against her given the circumstances of their meeting. "If I don't see you again before the battle – be safe, Lando."

"You too, Princess," he said seriously, before breaking into a wide grin. "And you're going to want to kiss me like that every so often just to keep this moon jockey on his toes."

"I'll try to remember that," Leia replied.

"Yeah, well, don't try too hard," Han huffed. "See you tomorrow, Lando. Later, Chewie."

"Chewie, I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow," Leia said.

**I will make sure of it, Princess** Chewie replied, giving Lando yet another look to confirm he was following Chewie off the ship. Reluctantly, he did, leaving Han and Leia alone in the hold.

"So?" Leia asked quietly.

"I'm goin'," Han sighed. "I'm goin' up with them. Leading it."

She nodded, taking his roughened hands in hers. "I know that's supposed to make me happy, but somehow…"

"I don't think happy has anything to do with it for either of us right now," he observed. "More like doin' what we have to do and hoping for the best."

She nodded again but kept her silence. He obviously wanted to say something more to her, so she watched and waited as he studied her face, considering his words.

"I'm sorry for this afternoon, Leia…it's just…"

"How can I ask you to apologize for wanting to keep me safe?" she asked quietly. "My immediate reaction is to get angry. And it shouldn't be. It should be gratitude. So I'm the one who needs to apologize."

"Maybe I need to accept that safety isn't so much in the cards for you and me," he shrugged.

"Or maybe it's right around the corner," she answered, wishing she really believed it.

"It's just…" Han hesitated again. Putting these thoughts he was having into words...he wasn't sure he wanted to admit them, to be this vulnerable, even to Leia. Then he realized that if he couldn't spit out his true feelings to her, they were gonna be in trouble fast. "We're seconds away from a life that I never even bothered to daydream about until I met you. I was gonna go from fling to fling and never commit to anything because I always gonna be a petty crook alone and on the run from a bounty hunter, or a gangster, or the Empire. One of them was gonna put a blaster hole in me someday, and it really didn't matter. I knew that my life was gonna be short and pointless. But now, the idea of a future – of our future – I really don't wanna check out now. And if something happens to you - when I thought I was looking at you for the last time on Bespin…when you got blasted on Endor…"

He turned away from her and hesitated, not wanting to remember everything that went through his mind as he looked at her while being lowered into the carbonite or the way his heart stopped in the second between seeing the stormtrooper's laser blast hit her and realizing she was alright.

"You have any idea how much all this has changed me, Leia? I'm not the guy the kid and the old man found in a bar on Tatooine."

"I'm not the girl who made your life a living hell for about two years after you saved me from certain death on the Death Star."

"That girl was not who I am meant to be." Leia slipped under his arm to face him once again. She brushed away a lock of hair obscuring his troubled eyes. "And maybe the guy in the bar on Tatooine wasn't entirely who Han Solo was always meant to be."

"At least that guy…that guy wouldn't be…," he took a deep breath. "I'm afraid here, Leia. I've never had too much to lose before. And I'm feeling like I jinxed us yesterday by making plans for the future."

"Want to take it back?" she challenged him, with the hint of a dare in her eyes.

"No," he replied. "No. I just want this to be over." He chuckled mirthlessly. "Han Solo wants a fight to be over. There's something nobody would believe."

"I would," she replied. "I can't tell you I don't have a bad feeling about this battle. I heard what you said to Lando about Crix, and unfortunately I agree with you. His tolerance for casualties—" she shrugged. "Let's just say part of me wouldn't have been entirely opposed if you did try to kidnap me," she smiled, hoping to cajole Han out of this mood, if only because she didn't want him to walk into this battle at less than the reckless best that always seemed to save his neck, "If you'd kidnapped me, I could have missed the battle and blamed it all on you. Two of my very favorite things to do."

"Not too late," he said, only half teasing.

She smiled wistfully. "If our destiny is to have a real life and not just try to cram a life into the gaps between being chased around the galaxy by Imperials and probably dying early anyway-"

"-the only way to get there is through this battle," he finished for her.

"Just our kreffin' luck, your Nerfnessness," she raised an eyebrow and gave him a one-sided smirk in a much more than passable imitation of his favorite expression.

Han couldn't help but laugh in response. Leia's hidden gift for mimicry was one of the unexpected things he'd learned about her on that long trip to Bespin, one that often left him helpless with laughter. It was a secret safe between them that he knew she'd never allowed herself to share with anyone else. He wanted to spend a lot of years learning more of her secrets and letting her in on his.

"Well," Han sighed. "I guess I can't do anything that's gonna make Darth Mothma wish more than she already does that I was still frozen solid."

"Carlist found you."

Han nodded. "I'd already decided I was in before he did. Gotta tell you, I was wondering why you were sitting next to me during the Endor briefing instead of standing up with the leadership."

"Well, now you know."

"You didn't deserve that."

She shook her head. "I probably did. You don't just go part-time on a military organization you help to lead, risk your neck on something they consider unrelated, and expect there to be no consequences. So when I gave you a hard time about your threat to walk away today, yes, I know first-hand what I'm talking about."

Han took that in for a moment. He hadn't realized, until Rieekan clued him in, how much it had cost Leia within the Rebellion leadership to come after him. Sure, he'd been overwhelmed and awed that she, and Luke and Lando, had come for him – no one had ever considered him worth rescuing before – but he hadn't considered the consequences of her choice. It was another reason he had to prove to Mothma that he was worthy of the price Leia had chosen to pay. He had a bad feeling that he'd be trying to prove that to Mothma for as long as he lived. Which may not be very long, given the odds on this battle.

"You still didn't deserve those things she said to you – especially in front of the leadership. I do…but you didn't." He reached out and caressed her cheek.

Leia's throat grew dry as she recognized that Han had given her the perfect opening to spin this conversation in the direction she intended. But before she could say a word, she felt a blush racing up her neck toward her cheeks.

Han saw the change come over her and gave her a quizzical look. "What is it?"

She took a deep breath, realizing that was hardly a seductive gesture. "When it comes to you, Han, I don't care what Mon Mothma wants," she said, shakily. "Because I know what I want. You. I want you."

She pulled Han toward her and kissed him, but beyond returning the kiss in full, Han didn't make any moves. She broke off the kiss, looking at him confusedly.

"You've got me, Leia," Han kissed her forehead. "For good."

Her first reaction to his chaste kiss was an unbidden flare of anger. Han knew exactly what she was trying to say – in a painfully awkward way – and he was toying with her.

"Oh, flyboy, come on!" she snapped, embarrassed.

But after one look at the utter bafflement on his face, her self-conscious annoyance dissipated in nervous laughter. He really didn't have any clue what she was trying to get across. All the nerves, desire, and tension may have been making her giddy, but she couldn't help laugh at the absurdity of the situation: renowned ladykiller Han Solo – of all people – needed virginal Leia Organa – of all people – to spell this out for him?

"Oh, no," Leia observed, seeing Han's increasingly mystified look. "All along I thought you weren't trainable, but I think I may have trained you too well."

"Huh?"

She took a moment, realizing that although situation was absurd, being this forward wasn't going to get any easier. "I meant…I've been thinking, since we left Tatooine…I've been wanting to…"

Han realized with a start exactly what she was talking about. That was why she was trembling. He couldn't have been more thunderstruck if she'd told him…well, he supposed hearing about Vader was a little more shocking, but he still hoped his mouth wasn't hanging open and making him look like a dumb mouthbreathing cyox.

"I want to be with you. Tonight."

"You want to sleep with me? Now?" He didn't think his voice had risen like that since he was about fourteen.

"I definitely don't want to sleep," Leia parried, although she felt her blush threatening to deepen, if that were even possible.

Every iota of Han's being wanted to lift her into his arms and race into his cabin before she changed her mind, but something held him back. _ Why_, he wondered, _was it so hard when you loved someone?_ _Bad choice of words at the moment_, he amended. _Difficult. Complicated. Why was it so complicated when you loved someone?_ He'd wanted to hear this offer from her for years – hell, since he'd met her, because what halfway sane human male wouldn't want to be with her – but while he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that making love to her here, now, WHENEVER was absolutely the right thing for him, he also knew – because she had told him repeatedly and in no uncertain terms – that Alderaanian royal tradition and her own inclination meant that she would be waiting until she was married. So, although he really couldn't believe himself, he was going to hold back until he knew what changed her mind and was satisfied that she was doing this for the right reasons. He cupped her face in his hands, looking at her intently. She raised a questioning eyebrow in response.

"What changed, Leia?" he asked quietly. "Is it because we're getting married, or is it because that with the Vader thing you're somehow 'less' than you were, or is it because you think we're goners anyway? You know I've wanted you forever. But I need to know - hell, I don't quite know why I need to know – but I need to know that this is the right call for you."

Surprised by his question, she took a moment to respond. She almost got annoyed again, given that she'd spent so much time struggling over this issue. But Han didn't know that she'd been waging an internal war over this for months. Here was the man she'd once assumed didn't care about anything or anybody putting her wants and needs above his own yet again. No, anger wasn't at all the right response, just gratitude that Han Solo really was the "nice men" he'd once alleged himself to be.

"After Bespin…when we were looking for you…I realized that I wasted so much of our time – I was afraid I'd wasted all of our time – being bound by traditions that don't have a place in my life anymore and by refusing to acknowledge that my feelings and desires matter too. And then on the way back from Tatooine, when you told me you loved me and you were staying…I knew that there was really no reason to wait anymore. But I kept losing my nerve. Hearing the voices of my parents, and my tutors, and Alderaanian ministers who drove into me the moral obligations of the girl in line for the throne. We're a conservative people, and we don't take sex lightly…but the fact is the rules that I was bound to live by weren't morals at all. They were ultimately practical, designed to protect a woman of noble birth who may very well be married to a man whom she doesn't even like, much less desire, but with whom she would be expected to have children," Leia sighed. "Heavens help the princess who's experienced physical passion with one man and then has to make a political marriage with another. Recipe for adultery, and divorce, and therefore political crises and public humiliation of the reigning family. And none of that has any relevance to my world anymore or to our life together. But tradition and rules that have become a part of your thinking from your earliest days…they don't let you go very easily, no matter how much your heart is telling you something very different."

Han took that in. "If somethin' happened to me—"

"NOTHING is going to happen to you," she replied forcefully. He couldn't go into battle even considering that.

Han wouldn't be dissuaded. "Those traditions would matter again if something happened to me and some prince came calling. A lot of nobles out there in the galaxy wouldn't want anything to do with you if they knew you'd been with the likes of me—"

She sighed. He really did want an answer. "You're right, there are many other worlds where a royal female is considered debased if she's not 'innocent'," she agreed. "In which case that's one less political alliance someone could try to sell me into. And I am perfectly comfortable with that."

"Naw, I just meant that after me, no king or prince or other noble would want to compete—" Han grinned slyly, although they both knew that wasn't what he meant at all.

"Well, that goes without saying," Leia grinned back, running a finger down his arm. "So are you going to prove it to me, flyboy?"

Looking down at her, Han felt almost intoxicated by his longing and by the nervous blush that combined with her jokingly seductive words. She'd never been more beautiful to him than she was right now. Of course, he had that thought that on a daily basis. But he hadn't yet managed to put into words exactly what he meant to say.

"If something happens tomorrow, I don't want you to regret me, Leia."

Those eyes that had been so dark with desire a moment ago looked up at him, immediately welling with unshed tears.

"You are the love of my life," she replied in a choked voice. "No matter what happens, tomorrow or ten years from now, I will never, ever regret you."

That was really what he needed to know, that come what may tomorrow, she wouldn't look back on this night with remorse, berating herself for not living up to ghosts of the past or for foreclosing other possible futures should he not make it back. Han nodded, finally convinced that she was as sure of this has he was.

"And you are the love of mine. So what in the Nine Hells of Corellia are we waiting for?" he replied softly as he pulled her into his arms, noticing with a chuckle that during the course of their intense conversation, Leia had somehow backed him up to the door of his cabin, making the trip to his bunk about three steps. He gently sat her down on the bed, kissing his way from her temple down her neck, where he felt her heartbeat throbbing quickly, more from nerves, he assumed, than anticipation. Although he was taking this as slowly as any man possibly could, he tried to think of something to do or say to reassure her. Luckily, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something pink and lacy as Leia's tunic slid down her shoulder.

"Now, wait a second," he said, running a finger under the thin strap. She shivered at the feel of his touch and his breath on her skin as he inspected the lace. "I'm pretty sure that's not standard Alliance issue, your Highness. At least they never gave me gear nearly that pretty."

Silently blessing Han for trying to calm her increasing nerves through their familiar banter, she smiled. "Ackbar has first dibs on the men's pretty stuff."

"I always knew those Calamarians were trouble."

"Besides, I ordered them to make you choose your gear last. I didn't want the pretty gear to increase the size of your already large—"

"Large what?" Han parried.

"—ego," she finished, realizing that given the circumstances, she'd walked right into that one. She turned toward him in her best hoity-toity princess manner, leaving his lips looking for the earlobe they'd been headed toward. "I have yet to see anything else large."

"Nicely played, Princess," he acknowledged as he reached around to loose her hair from its casual bun. She shyly unclasped the tunic from her shoulder, letting it fall partly open. Lost in the utterly arousing sight of the pink negligee and her hair swirling down to her waist, Han wasn't sure he could keep the foreplay at this leisurely pace. He tested the waters by sliding his finger down the strap to the top of her breast, and he felt her tense again.

"It's alright," he whispered. "I love you."

Surprised by both the intensity of her nerves and the intensity of her desire, Leia fought off the embarrassing thought that all she could do was follow Han's lead, because beyond a few inappropriate holovids and smutty novels she'd pilfered from classmates in her school days, the circumstances of her life had left her completely a blank slate. She tried to push out of her mind the lewd jokes she'd overheard from the men in the Alliance about women who were so sexually ineffectual that they may as well have been virgins. She felt like she was at the very least about to prove all of those jokes true …or worse.

"I'm so naïve," Leia bit her lip.

"You're a work of art." Han continued to gently run his thumb under the lingerie strap. He'd never been with a woman within a hundred parsecs of this innocent. It unnerved him that Leia looked almost on the verge of tears. He pulled her close and held her tightly to his chest, stroking her hair and hoping that he was being the man he figured she needed him to be.

"What's the matter, sweetheart? If you're having second thoughts, it's okay." He held his breath, hoping against hope that she wasn't having second thoughts.

"No!" she exclaimed. "It's not that!"

"Then what is it? I get the feeling that you're not even having the slightest good time at the moment."

"It's…," she shook her head, looking away.

"What is it, c'mon."

"I can walk into Jabba's Palace with a thermal detonator stuck to my chest but I don't know how to make love to the man I love. I don't know what I'm doing."

Han laughed. "Is that all?"

"All?" Leia looked at him indignantly.

"You have no idea how sexy you are and I love that. I know you're inexperienced—"

"TOTALLY inexperienced—"

"Ok, TOTALLY inexperienced, and given my history, I have no right to like tht either, but I do. I also know that you may be berating yourself for your inexperience now but you're going to figure out the power you have over me here real quick," he smirked. "And then I'm really in trouble."

She shook her head. "I've been fighting a war since I was sixteen and I have no idea how to be a woman—"

"Funny, I think you're pretty much the perfect woman. And for once in your life, there's nobody here judging you, Leia. Only a guy who going to feeling really, really lucky no matter how awkward tonight is."

"I just don't want to disappoint you," she admitted.

"Leia," Han whispered as he pulled her down toward the pillows, "that would be impossible."

She could tell from the small catch in his voice that those were among the truest words Han Solo had ever spoken. Then their lips met and for just a few stolen hours, nothing – not the Empire, the war, or the coming battle – existed for them except each other.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Klim Gital woke with a start in his cell deep within the Imperial Detention Facility on Coruscant. He feared he would never sleep soundly again; of course, he also feared that soon a torture specialist or executioner would arrive to see that he was permanently escorted to the darkness beyond, to which Essag had given him a temporary visit and to which he hoped never to return.

He wondered whether everyone experienced that – place? state? time? what, indeed, was it? – after death, a state of disembodied consciousness pervaded by a dark presence that he didn't see but felt all around him. If that was the inevitable end of life, he would gladly elect to be frozen in carbonite for all eternity instead, because in his brief foray to the other side, he had been certain that the darkness was eternal, and the monstrous presence – singular, not plural, for he had felt only one presence – was absolutely real. Perhaps this was the Dark Side of the Force, that strange symbiosis of energy and might to which Lord Vader and, now, Emperor Essag ascribed their powers. Rumor had always been that Emperor Palpatine was a Sith as well, but he had not been forthcoming about the source of his power.

If Gital had experienced the Force itself, if it even existed, did he feel the darkness because that was the path he had chosen or because that was all there was? His journey to the upper echelons of Imperial military leadership had not been so much a path of choice as the only way out of a limiting life as the son of a minor functionary on Dalsam Major. He did nothing other than stolidly obey the orders he was given, performing particularly well in the attack on Yavin 4, which earned him his admiralty. Questions of right and wrong were answered well above his pay grade.

With a woosh, the door to Gital's cell opened, and someone clothed in the robes of the Imperial Ruling Council and masked in a Vamati scarf, which revealed only the deep-set eyes of an aging human male, stepped in. This was likely the man sent to escort Gital to his destiny. The terror of the dark presence clawed at Gital's consciousness, but he managed to hide the fear bubbling inside him.

"Are you my executioner or my escort to the torture chambers, sir?" Gital asked, hoping that at least the shadow of a sneer remained in his voice.

A raspy laugh escaped the mask. "I am neither, Admiral, for which you should give some thanks," he replied, sealing the cell door with a locktrip, then waiving a frequencer over the air vents. "Now we can be assured of a few moments of privacy before the trooper in charge notices that detention cell 631 has gone totally silent." The man sat down. "So, tell me, how does it feel to be the Sith Lord's witness?"

"Witness?"

"No need to be coy, Admiral. Rumors travel quickly. He disciplined you, then allowed you to be the only survivor of that room. Clearly, you are his witness. But witness of what, I wonder?"

"Who are you?"

"Who is the second most powerful man in the Empire?" the older man rejoined.

"Who remains living, you mean?" Gital questioned.

Again, the raspy laugh. "Whether Lord Vader lived or not, I believe the answer would have remained the same."

Gital considered that response. "Without the Death Star, our greatest military weapon is the Outer Rim Fleet. So I would say, sir, that as of yesterday, Moff Zakine became the second most powerful man in the Empire."

The man nodded. "Your analysis of military power is apt, and, in fact, the reason I am here. But, perhaps, there is an argument that the Grand Minister of the Treasury is the second most powerful man in the Empire. The power to increase the Empire's wealth, to levy taxes and duties, and to determine how our funds may be spent cannot be underestimated. That man holds great power. And until two timeparts ago, when our new Emperor disbanded the Ruling Council, revoked all executive powers and vested them in himself, that man was Cadaro Pault."

The man slowly removed his Vamati scarf, revealing an aged face with thin lips that looked like they'd been etched by a vibroblade slash across his face and the patrician nose of the Vamati.

"And that would be me." He sat down on Gital's hard comorite bunk, studying Gital with those cold eyes as Gital studied him back. If Gital remembered correctly, Pault had become Grand Minister of the Treasury not many years after the fall of the Republic and served at Palpatine's right hand for nearly fifteen years, an unimaginably long stint, since Ruling Council members tended to meet untimely deaths when their ambition outpaced their caution. But as Council members worked almost entirely behind the scenes, Gital could not be entirely sure this man was who he alleged himself to be, so caution was necessary.

"The Council has been disbanded?" Gital asked.

"What remained of it. Four Councilors were lost on the Death Star."

"And to what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from one of Palpatine's closest friends?"

"Friends?" Pault laughed. "You of all people should realize that one is not friends with a Sith. One is exceedingly respectful at all times and attempts to keep some degree of distance."

"So Palpatine was a Sith?"

"My dear Admiral Gital, do you really question that? Didn't everyone know that truth but refuse to acknowledge it so that we could maintain the pleasant fiction that the Empire was built on military and economic power, and not on a mystical power we all liked to believe was destroyed with the fall of the Jedi and left Vader as its last disciple?"

Gital didn't respond. He had considered the possibility of that "pleasant fiction" more than once over the years.

"Unlike you to be silent, when silence in front of a Sith is a lesson you failed to learn."

"When I see the arrogance that has caused us dearly in the past asserting itself yet again, I feel compelled to speak out."

"A lesson you STILL have failed to learn," Pault corrected himself. "Good. I was counting on that."

Gital flushed; he did speak up too much, and he knew it. But for the first time since he'd signed up for the Imperial Academy, Gital stood before someone who seemed to value that.

A chime sounded on Pault's chronometer. "My men will arrive in four minutes. We have little time."

"Are you rescuing me, Councilor Pault?" This became more astonishing by the moment.

"Perhaps. Tell me, Klim, your opinion of Emperors past and present."

Gital, again wondering if this was all a ruse designed by a particularly sadistic torture specialist, hesitated.

"This is not the time to keep quiet for the first time in your life, Admiral."

"The Emperors – or, as you claim, the Sith - are arrogant," Gital blurted. "Their powers are astounding but their arrogance overwhelms their sense. Palpatine led us to ruin and he named as his successor one younger and more skilled, perhaps, but even more arrogant. A man who believes he is to bring about the resurrection of the Sith Empiire."

Pault's eyes narrowed. "He said that?"

Gital nodded. "That is his impossible and absurd dream."

"In less than the space of a standard day, our new Emperor has dissolved the Council, assumed direct control and oversight of the treasury, the military –"

Pault stopped as he saw the startled look on Gital's face.

"—yes, Supreme General Adenze has met an unpleasant end – and imprisoned members of the High Judiciary Tribunal. He has commanded the Outer Rim Fleet to the Coruscant system and has informed his officers of his intent to allow the destruction of Coruscant. He has done things on one day that Palpatine – for all his arrogance – did not attempt in twenty years of rule. The Empire, as ruled by Palpatine, was ultimately an orderly bureaucracy, despite your claims that Palpatine has led us to ruin. Palpatine knew what he didn't know and entrusted others to carry out the functions of government as he carried out his plans of conquest. Palpatine used the Force for power."

"They all use the Force for power – Jedi and Sith alike," Gital replied.

"Many do," Pault inclined his head in agreement. "But now, I believe, we are ruled by one who does not."

"What else is there?" Gital asked.

"Darkness itself. Ushered in by anarchy."

Gital felt the skin on his neck prickle. He wished he didn't understand the reference so well. "As anarchy builds the road to ruin…."

"…a ruler will arise to enshroud the galaxy in the darkness of the Sith," Pault finished.

Yes, Gital remembered that statement. It had been made by Conn Wasara, a Romendite in the Imperial Senate, on the day three years ago that Palpatine dissolved the Senate and gave the regional governors power. Gital had thought it an idiot statement, as the vesting of power in the regional governors decreased the chances for anarchy. Many others had thought, given the Romendy sentients' legendary power of foresight, that Wasara's words were a prophecy. Palpatine had ordered Wasara terminated soon after.

"He said…" Gital struggled to remember the words Essag had said to him, "he said I was a witness to history. To the beginning of a greater Empire than that I served…"

"Do you see the situation, Klim?" asked Pault. "Soon, this Empire will be unrecognizable to us. Can I rely on your help?"

If nothing else, Gital thought, supporting Pault would get him out of this cell. "Yes. But what are you asking of me?"

Pault checked his chronometer. There was little time. "There are tripwires in the treasury system which are unknown to all except me. Simply, despite Essag's assumption that he now directly controls, and can destroy, all credits, until those few he trusts can vet the system, I can still manipulate the treasury and prevent him from destroying the notion of credits. I will need to get to an offworld site to assure the continued security of the Imperial Treasury."

Gital saw no role for himself in Pault's description. He was no slicer. He wasn't a systems expert of any kind.

"So you see, for the moment I still control the Empire's financial security. But as you noted earlier, the man who controls the Outer Rim Fleet is the strongest man in the military. I believe you and he have been known to be close."

Gital nodded. He had gone through the Imperial Acadamy and Command Officers Training with Nev Zakine. They had been close then, and still spoke when possible, although their friendship was not nearly as warm as it once had been. Zakine had progressed more rapidly through the ranks, and with the rapid advancement, he grew more and more ambitious. Nothing was ever enough for Nev. Which, Gital thought, may make Zakine and Pault ideal for each other – all the power meeting all the money. Gital still didn't feel quite as if he wanted to be part of this triumvirate, but again: cell versus freedom.

"What's your endgame?" Gital asked.

"I have a battle cruiser waiting for us at Palace East. When the Outer Rim Fleet comes out of hyperspace, you will comm Zakine for permission to come aboard. You will not tell him I am with you."

Gital saw a flaw in this plan, one involving the Alliance blowing them out of the sky, but he was a good pilot. He could outmaneuver the Alliance. Plus, Zakine would be curious enough at the oddity to take him aboard.

"I will tell him what has occurred and propose a deal: with the firepower of the Outer Rim Fleet and the wealth of the Imperial Treasury, we will pledge ourselves to remaking the Empire into what it should have been from the beginning: a military and economic power with no historic equal, ruled not by the whims of a mystic, but by the power of the purse and of the blaster. The Jedi and Sith will both meet their final destruction here on Coruscant."

Gital jumped as he heard the sound of blaster fire in the corridor outside the cell, followed by a strangled shout. Then more blasts hit the door. Pault quickly deprogrammed the locktrip and turned to Gital.

"Those are my men. Do you choose a life of power and freedom or life as a soon-to-be-executed slave of the Sith?"

Gital didn't need to be asked twice. He hurried out after Pault.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Leia strapped herself into her seat on the Tuelimi shuttle well hidden inside the monstrous freighter, glad that she had been the first of the Special Forces group to board. At least she would have a few moments to get a better handle on her emotions before anyone else showed up.

This morning had already been extremely difficult, at least in part because Han couldn't possibly have been more tender and loving than he had been last night. She would have happily stayed on the Falcon wrapped in his strong arms forever, but they awoke this morning to the clanging of the alert informing the Rebels to prepare for commencement of battle.

Before they got up to dress, they made love once more, the warmth of his body permeating her every pore, the feeling of his hands tangled in her hair making her wish more than every that they could run away. They'd dressed silently afterwards, each trying to come to grips with the reality that they'd have to emerge from their short-lived cocoon and separate to go into battle.

When the second alarm rang, telling them to report to their stations, Han grasped Leia by the arms and looked intently into her eyes.

"The next time I see you, Princess," Han said, "Coruscant will have fallen."

She nodded silently, but he continued to look at her intently. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn't just stating something he wanted to be fact. He was willing her to say it and believe it too.

"The next time I see you," she replied, "Coruscant will have fallen and the Empire won't be able to part us again." She could almost feel the visceral ache of hoping those words were true.

"Damn right," Han had deployed his most heart-melting smile. "Nobody's gonna take me away from my wife…Wife. I really like that word."

"Don't you forget that, flyboy," Leia replied.

"Never, Your Worship."

They'd walked into the main hold of the ship, where Chewie had laid out a fresh ring of Alderaanian nut bread for Leia take with her. She said her goodbyes to him, reminding him to keep his crazy pilot in line, then rode the lift up to the top hatch with Han, where she turned to him once more and kissed him gently.

"I love you."

"I know," he replied. "and I love you."

"I know."

"Now get outta here, Princess," Han said. "Your crazy Rebellion has an Empire to finish off."

"Yes," she took a deep breath, willing herself to put one foot in front of the other. "We do. I'll see you on the other side of the battle."

"You will."

She walked through the docking anteroom, squaring her small shoulders as she went. She didn't know how long Han had watched her leaving; she didn't trust herself not to turn and run to him if she looked back. So she kept walking away purposefully, hoping that everything they'd said was true, but also relieved that she'd managed to tuck a small minidat note into the pocket of his utility vest when he was in the fresher just in case she couldn't keep the promises they'd made.

Leia jumped as a soldier boarding the shuttle distracted her from her thoughts. She looked at her chronometer and found that her warning to herself to pull it together had led directly into five minutes of reliving the events of the last few hours and wandering deeper into her thoughts of Han. She couldn't let that happen again; distraction like that would endanger her, Luke, and the whole mission. She willed herself to concentrate only on the here and now.

Fortunately – or, she considered, maybe intentionally – Luke walked in at just that moment and sat down next to her.

"Good morning."

"If there are any Jedi tricks to keep your mind completely in the present, I need to know them now," she replied shortly.

Luke smiled at her tone. He knew she wasn't upset with him – he'd stopped by at the Falcon a few minutes ago to say his farewells to Han and found his friend in much the same state. They were both suffering, and both afraid for the other. Yoda may have taught Luke that fear was of the Dark Side, but Luke felt that perhaps Yoda's statement needed some context: giving in to fear was of the Dark Side, but feeling fear for one you loved and pushing forward for the right…no, that wasn't of the Dark Side, whatever Yoda may say.

"I'm not sure I can teach you any 'tricks' that quickly," he intended to rib her with the word "tricks," but she appeared not to notice. "Leia, are you going to be okay?"

Her eyebrows flew together into a scowl. "Of course I am. I have to be." she snapped.

Luke was glad to see her bristle at any intimation that she might not hold it together. He remembered how Han had noticed Leia's indomitable spirit immediately. He hoped that someday Leia wouldn't need to call on that spirit so much.

As Luke strapped himself in for take-off, Leia decided that she had to tell Luke about her emotional struggles on Coruscant. She'd wondered if it was wise to unburden herself while simultaneously burdening Luke, but she need to know if her feelings were hers alone, based on the evil cast of characters who had dominated her life on the planet, or if they did actually support Luke's contention that she was strong in the Force. She still half-hoped that Luke was wrong, and that her ability to sense Luke's feelings and presence was due to sharing the same womb with him for nine months instead.

"Luke, I need to tell you something," she said, trying to keep her voice low enough so that the others boarding the shuttle wouldn't hear her.

Luke nodded briefly.

"When I was a Senator on Coruscant," she began slowly, not quite sure how to explain her feelings, "I always felt – no, that's not right, it was more that I could sense – something horribly amiss. Something that I thought of as feeling very much like death."

She looked at Luke searchingly, questioning whether what she was saying made any kind of sense. She thought she saw understanding in his eyes, so she plunged ahead.

"It wasn't – whatever I was sensing, it wasn't the Emperor. There was absolutely a feeling of evil that emanated from him, but this was different. This felt entirely more personal. As if the darkness were somehow connected to me," she concluded, looking to Luke for confirmation that she wasn't out of her mind.

He took her hand, thinking of his own experience at the cave on Dagobah. He didn't know if she was ready to hear, with everything happening today, that her Force sensitivity would lead directly to experiences like the one she was describing. So he kept quiet.

"Luke, I feel like something horrific happened on Coruscant. Something worse than I even know. And it's somehow connected to me, or maybe to us. The only way that's possible is through Vader. When we're on the planet, I need you to tell me if you sense it too."

"I will," Luke promised. "But we're going to go in, do what we have to do, and get out, so we're not going to hang around inspecting it right now, ok? Your fiancé would have my head if I went on a personal mission this time, Jedi or not."

"HEY!" Jax Cantos, a tall Corellian special forces soldier, called to Leia as he entered the shuttle. "Hey, I just figured out you're Solo's girl—"

Luke closed his eyes, trying not to laugh. Such a casual appraisal of Leia's role in the universe likely would provoke a fantastically sharp response. He felt the anger flare in her, then die out. He also noticed that Riekkan, entering behind Jax, was flaming red with anger and embarrassment at the informal address.

"Perhaps, Commander Cantos, General Solo is my guy—" she raised an eyebrow mischievously, stunning everyone on the shuttle except Cantos. "And I wonder how many credits that guy promised you if you would try to get my ire up by entering that way."

Jax grinned back. "A hundred."

Luke and Riekkan exchanged glances, not altogether sure what was transpiring. Leia, however, had seen right through Cantos to Han. If Han couldn't be there to keep her in battle mode with his banter, he'd decided to find a reasonable Corellian substitute to do so.

"He underpaid you, Cantos," Leia said. "Perhaps that's the reason for your poor performance. And does seeing right through you mean that fifty of those credits are mine?"

Jax shook his head. "You should have heard how many he offered me to accidentally throw you off the freighter just before we took off."

Leia laughed out loud. Yes, Han probably had made that offer, and not entirely in jest, either.

"So why aren't I on my royal rear-end in the docking bay?" Leia looked pointedly in the direction of the closing hatch.

"Because I'm more afraid of you than I am of him, Princess," Cantos replied.

"Good call, Commander," Leia said as they heard the roar of the freighter's engines being lit.

LLLLLLLLLLLLL

Han sat silently in the Falcon's cockpit watching as the freighter carrying Leia took to the stars, saying a silent prayer for Leia's safety to all the ancient gods of Corellia in whom he'd never believed. He hated that the Tuelimi shuttle carrying Leia was hidden away in the third freighter to depart. He'd understood why it wasn't on the first – if they were compromised, the first freighter would be vaporized as soon as it hit the checkpoint – but he thought it a serious miscalculation that they didn't get the shuttle on the second freighter to go, because anything could go wrong by the time two freighters had made it to the planet. The plan was tactically bad, but since Han hadn't figured out until ten minutes ago, when the second freighter took off, that Leia would be going out on the third, he'd had no opportunity to complain. He just hoped this wouldn't go as badly as many Rebel missions over the years.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn't hear Chewie growling behind him until the smack on his head came. It was softer than the usual Wookiee smack, for sure, but still hard enough to sting.

"Ow. What?"

**The Princess looked very sad this morning** Chewie growled.

"Yeah, well—" Han nodded.

**You must have been a grave disappointment to her last night, Solo** Chewie finished, laughing at his friend.

"The kreffin' hell I was, you big oaf." Han knew that Chewie, with his heightened Wookiee senses, always knew what was happening on the Falcon, so although he'd have to figure out, someday, a delicate way of explaining that to Leia, there was no sense denying to Chewie what had been going on last night. He also knew Chewie was trying to focus him for the battle. Chewie had a point, because Han's mind kept drifting back to Leia's face last night, to the shy blush on her cheeks and her slightly abashed giggle after they'd made love for the first time. He wanted to have a lot more chances to hear that giggle, and to wake up and watch her sleeping peacefully, her warm breath tickling his chest.

Only winning big today would assure that, so Han forced himself back into the present and started doing his usual pre-launch check. He reached into his pocket for his headset, and felt something unfamiliar – a small minidat he knew he hadn't put into that pocket. He pulled it out and lit the screen, seeing Leia's neat Aurabesh handwriting:

My scoundrel—

I've lost many things over the course of this war, but I may be the luckiest woman in the galaxy, because I found you. I want with all my heart to become your wife and partner for as long as we live.

But we both know, maybe more than anyone, that we're never promised a future. So if something should happen to me, promise me this: Find happiness again. Find love. Thrive. Live a life that will echo through your future generations so that on that day, Force willing, we meet again, we can look on each other in eternity and smile at the memory of a lives well spent. And know that I will love you for as long as there are stars.

\- Leia

Han coughed to clear the lump that had formed in his throat. As long as there are stars…he didn't think she too remembered the song. It had been playing on the night he'd taken her out on Xionta to celebrate a successful mission, a night that could have been the start of their relationship if Imperials hadn't invaded the club where they were dancing – the first time she'd ever danced with civilians in a club or in fact danced at all outside of a very formal, Alderaanian ball - just as he was about to lean in and kiss her. Then came the mission to Ord Mantell and everything got all kreffed up for a while.

For the first time in his life, Han Solo wished that he too had those crazy Force powers that he couldn't quite deny any longer, just to be able to reach out and make Leia swear that living up to what she asked of him in that note would not be necessary. Or to threaten Luke with death-by-his-own-lightsaber should he fail to keep her safe. Or, most simply, to feel her living presence and know she was okay.

**Solo, snap out of it** Chewie rumbled. **You're embarrassing yourself.**

Han jumped at Chewie's growl. Rubbing his eyes to clear some blurriness, he took a deep breath. He hadn't realized how out of it he'd been.

"Yeah," Han replied. "Let's turn this Empire into a kreffin' pile of kest. Admiral Ackbar, we have permission for launch?"

"Permission granted," crackled Ackbar's voice over the comm. "And may the Force be with us."

"Here's hopin." Han flipped several switches on the comm. "All Red wings, this is Solo. Clearance to depart has been granted. Let's shred 'em. Rogues and the Falcon up first, Lando, you and Yellow Squadron to follow."

"Roger, Falcon," Wedge Antilles replied from his X-wing.

With that, Han engaged the engines and the Falcon shot into space.

LLLLLLLLLLLL

"Roger, Han," Lando said as he watched his old ship blast away. He looked at Nien Numb next to him, tinkering with the controls of the new ship the Alliance had given to Lando. It's former owner, Tev Magyan, had not survived the land battle on Endor, but his ship had. A Corellian battle freighter in the KL-300 class, it was newer than the Falcon, but not quite as fast. Last night, lying in his bunk, Lando had decided to name it "The Bespin Vow."

The name had seemed appropriate for a lot of reasons. First, because it still deeply bothered him that he'd betrayed Han, Leia, and Chewie on Cloud City, no matter how much the Empire had betrayed him too. There would be no more deals with the Empire, ever. Friends came first – that was his unspoken promise to his friends in this battle. And then there was the fact that, as Han had noted, Cloud City had been the first time Lando had gone respectable, and he liked it. He'd enjoyed the responsibility of being a leader and trying to be a good administrator of a city of nearly a million people. The Empire had taken that from him. So far as he knew, the Empire still controlled the city. Once this battle was over, he was going to find a way to talk the Alliance into giving him a squadron to go back there and free the people, with the Bespin Vow leading the way.

"Yellow leader, you heard Solo. Let's show these Imperial bastards who's the new boss in town."

With a punch of the controls, Lando guided the Bespin Vow into space behind the Rogues, the X-Wings and Y-Wings of Yellow Squadron following.

LLLLLLLLLLLLL

Luke nudged Leia's shoulder as she sat tensely next to him, watching the monitor on the shuttle's control panel. They were getting close to the checkpoint.

"There's something I want you to have," Luke said, holding out a metal cylinder.

Leia took a quick glance at it and shook her head. Luke was still pushing her in a direction she wasn't sure she wanted to go. More than that, she worried, a direction that could endanger everyone she cared about.

"No. That's a weapon of a Jedi."

"No," Luke corrected her. "It's not a weapon of a Jedi until a Jedi builds her—"

Leia glared at him.

"—or his – own. Until then it's just another device on your utility belt."

Luke could tell that she was not at all convinced that he did not have ulterior motives. He wasn't altogether convinced of that himself, but last night he'd experienced a sense of overwhelming urgency, almost a command, that he build her a lightsaber. He had a second crystal stored away in case he ever needed to build himself another lightsaber, so he'd gotten immediately to work.

"It's a useful weapon for someone training to be a Jedi," she responded.

"For anyone. Including former smugglers who use it to slice open dead animals in order to save their friend's life."

Leia pressed her lips together. Luke had her there. She took the lightsaber from him, testing its weight in her had. It was surprisingly weightless and comfortable to hold. She was tempted to light it, but didn't really want to have a conversation about it with Cantos, who was watching the siblings curiously.

"Well, I did study and compete in Thraca swordsmanship at school. I was pretty good at it." Worried Luke would read too much into it, she didn't tell him that she would have easily won the Alderaanian championships had her guards allowed the next in line to the throne to battle with armed competitors. "I guess on some level, a sword is a sword."

To Luke's satisfaction, she found a free spot on her utility belt and clipped it on.

"But like a certain former smuggler, I'm going to reach for my blaster firs—"

The freighter shuddered quickly to a halt. They'd arrived at the checkpoint.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Palace Command relayed news of the departure of Pault's shuttle, with three life forms aboard, to Essag as he was issuing his final pre-battle orders to the Royal Guard. He noted Tyr Jolen shifting in his seat at the news, but Essag, though he respected Jolen's instincts, chose to ignore it. Maybe Pault did have some nefarious plan underway, but it was likely too minor to pursue.

"Let him go," Essag replied to Palace Command. "An old man long past his utility is of no further concern."

"Yes, Emperor," Command commed off.

Essag could sense the Guardsmen becoming antsy for battle. They trained regularly for bloodthirsty hand-to-hand combat in protection of the Emperor, but rarely had the opportunity to put that training into practice. No one in the galaxy had better training, and likely even Skywalker didn't know that the Tolumbian scythes carried by the Guardsmen were made of Ieoton, a compound so strong that even a lightsaber could not easily destroy it.

He'd given the Guard most of their orders: no matter what else happened during the battle, their job was to kill the Rebels accompanying Skywalker and Organa, but assure that the twins made it safely to the throne room. Once they secured their prize, the Guard would prepare Essag's command ship, the Eternal, man their own Quad Ion Engine fighters, and depart the planet. Only one order remained to be given.

"I have sent Moff Zakine his orders through an encrypted sublight comm which he will receive when the fleet comes out of hyperspace. I inform you of those orders as well, as they underscore the need to depart Coruscant with all due haste once Skywalker and Organa are secured." Essag paused to guarantee he had the full attention of everyone in the room. "I have instructed Moff Zakine to implement Order Three upon my command."

This time Tyr Roga startled. The young Guardsman did not expect to hear that order given in his lifetime. While he would follow the Emperor without question, he wondered what necessitated such a drastic step.

"Once the implementation order has been given, we will depart for Moraband immediately," Essag finished.

Another comm alert sounded.

"Sir," a shaken voice sounded over the comm. "We have a prisoner escape from Detention Level Six."

"Gital," Jolen said, looking at the Emperor. "Only Klim Gital was being held on Level Six."

Essag frowned. Three life forms on Pault's shuttle; Gital broken out of detention. Perhaps this warranted a closer look.

"Jolen, come with me. The rest of you, report to your stations."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"We're nearing our coordinates, Moff Zakine," Admiral Samsa reported as Zakine joined him at the bridge's forward viewport.

Zakine, deep in thought, barely nodded. He had spent much of his time during the long hyperspace journey in his quarters considering his orders and whether he'd fully obey them. He was strongly leaning toward the negative. He did not think it wise or necessary to enter this fray with his full complement of Star Destroyers. Half of his fleet would be more than enough to demolish any Rebellion attack. He needed the Executor-class dreadnaughts; their turbolasers had recently been supplemented with weaponry utilizing Death Star technology, and while he didn't quite understand that technology and its use of Khyber crystals, he was curious to test it out on the larger Rebellion ships. But he didn't need to spend six cycles repairing the annoying battle damage that X-Wings crashing against the hulls of his huge armada of Star Destroyers would inevitably cause.

"Samsa," Zakine said. "When we arrive at our coordinates, instruct the fourth command to redeploy to the Tromian rendezvous point."

"Sir?"

"You heard my order, Admiral Samsa."

"Yes, sir." Samsa hurried away to implement the command.

Zakine considered what he had just done. Disobeying a direct command of the Emperor came under the heading of high treason. This Emperor, however, was young and inexperienced, and no doubt eager – too eager – to use the Rebellion attack to display this military might to any star systems daring to use Palpatine's death as an excuse to step out of line. But the truth as Zakine saw it was that the new Emperor did not control the military might of the Empire. He, Moff Nev Zakine, did. And he wanted a good portion of his fleet to be hidden somewhere only he could find them.

Just in case the Emperor was unworthy of the loyalty of Nev Zakine and the Outer Rim Fleet.

Just in case.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Essag stepped over the prone Stormtroopers littering the Level Six command center. He sensed more than one clinging to life, but they had failed and were thus unworthy of further aid. He strode over to an injured but conscious officer being treated by a medic.

"Report, Commander," Essag demanded.

Commander Lass squinted, trying to recall through his pain and his fear at being face-to-face with the Emperor exactly what had occurred. He relayed, to the best of his recollection, that two Vamati Maga warriors had burst into the command center, quickly and silently killing the troopers with typical Maga tactics. Before they turned their weapons on Lass, he had seen an aged man, robed and wearing the traditional scarf indicating Vamati noble rank, entering the command center behind them. That was all he remembered before he lost consciousness due to his injuries. When he came too, the command center was empty, save for his dead and dying men, and the prisoner in cell 631 had escaped.

"Klim Gital and Cadaro Pault," Essag murmured to Jolem as they entered cell 631. "Two men with no obvious connection other than reason to turn on me."

Jolen considered his words carefully. Although he had once been among Essag's mentors, the Sith had a long history of killing those mentors when their usefulness ceased.

"My Lord Emperor," he said, bowing slightly. "I raise this question only for your consideration and not from impertinence. I have heard rumors…rumors of plots that were to be implemented upon the death of Palpatine, no matter who succeeded him as Emperor…perhaps, sir, there are more mutinous Imperial officers than we have acknowledged?"

Essag nodded. "Yes, Jolen. I am aware that the scope of the mutiny is larger than I have disclosed to anyone but you. That is why there will soon be no Imperial officers, only an Emperor and his Royal Guard. Order Tyr Roga to track Pault's shuttle. And Jolen – when we depart this planet, I want you to separate from us and dock with the Punisher. After Zakine has carried out Order Three, you are to kill him and assume your new position as commander of the Outer Rim Fleet."

His orders finished, Essag quickly walked away, not even pausing as he casually stretched out one arm and ended the life of the failed Commander Lass.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

"You still have to breathe, folks," whispered Rieekan as the Palace Attack Team members sat stock-still in the shuttle, straining to hear what was happening in the freighter carrying them. Luke closed his eyes, trying to sense what was going on outside without fully opening his mind to the Sith below. He felt confusion and then heard a shout as several blaster shots rang out.

Artoo, hidden away in a corner of the shuttle, whistled his concern softly.

"Oh, dear, oh –" An angry glare from Leia silenced Threepio mid-fret.

_You know, Han may just be right about him…_ The thought came unbidden to her mind, and Leia felt certain that the thought was not hers. She gave Luke the side-eye and saw a small smile on his face.

_You may be right_…she thought, directing her concentration to Luke.

Suddenly, with a lurch, the freighter started moving again. Everyone shared relieved looks and began to breathe normally.

"Good work," Luke turned to Leia. "You're starting to trust your senses."

"Thank the maker!" Threepio cried out as the ship had begun to pick up speed.

Leia turned to Luke and smirked, hoping he sensed what she was telling him. _When Han and I marry, I'm going to need to find Threepio a new employer._

Luke laughed.

"Don't look at me like I'm a possibility," he said aloud.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Rebel battalion hovered at just enough distance from Coruscant to be outside the Imperials' range of detection. Han fiddled with one of his several illegal subspace radio transmitters, occasionally catching one of the coded Alliance transmissions. Since he knew the codes, he also knew that two freighters had landed successfully on Coruscant, while the third had just cleared the checkpoint after a skirmish, which was hopefully so brief that the Imps had no time to report it.

"Hey, buddy, you see that?" Lando's voice crackled over the commlink. "At oh-six-two."

Han squinted out his viewport to see what Lando had spotted. A small shuttle, no more than a six-seater, appeared to be circling the planet in an orbit not too distant from the Rebels. The shuttle was a luxury cruiser, but Han noted that it had been retrofitted with more than one blast cannon.

"I can't believe it hasn't spotted us," Wedge chimed in.

"Vamati luxury ships have horrible visuals," Han said. "Not that I ever lifted one or anything."

"Looks like it's waiting for somebody's arrival," Lando surmised.

Han silently agreed. He had half a mind to drop his cover and blow it out of the sky. Hell, he actually had a full mind to drop his cover and blow it out of the sky. It had no business being in this neck of the woods at the moment.

As if he could read Han's mind, Admiral Ackbar chimed in. "It's a small shuttle. Whatever it's doing, it's too small to drop cover-"

"Uh, gentlemen? You might want to look at this," Lando interrupted.  
Han's eyes grew wide as ship after ship of the Outer Rim Fleet dropped out of hyperspace. The Fleet was even larger than the rumors promised. Four Executor-class dreadnaughts and-

"I'm reading one-twenty – no, wait, half of them just jumped again – sixty Star Destroyers and four Executors," Lando reported. "Wonder why those sixty ran out of here."

"They probably think they don't need 'em."

"They may be right," Lando said grimly.

"Holy kest," Han whispered under his breath. This could be a massacre. The firepower the Imperials had toted along to this party…even Han thought it was overkill. "Guess they intend to make a big statement."

**Been nice knowing you, Solo** Chewie growled.

"We ain't dead yet," Han replied. "Still gotta job to do."

He noted the Vamati cruiser making a run for one of the Executors. With a filp of a few switches on his radio, he heard the cruiser issuing an urgent message to board the Punisher. Whomever was on that shuttle was definitely up to no good.

"Ackbar," Han said sharply. "That shuttle—"

"Too far out of range, too insignificant," came the reply, this time from General Madine. "Destroy the Executors and it's no longer a problem."

Han wished he couldn't believe his ears. "Sure, just take out the Execs…no problem," he muttered. These Rebels…never do something the easy way when there's a suicidal route to take. If he survived this battle, he was going to start throwing his rank around. Or, perhaps, just throw the rank back in their faces so they could give it to some other lovestruck nerfherder dumb enough to try to prove his gallantry to suicidal fools.

"Chewie," Han sighed, "I got a really bad feeling about that shuttle."

**Me too** Chewie agreed. **And I'd like to know exactly how Madine thinks we can take out those Executors.**

Han deliberated for a moment, then spotted the hordes of TIE fighters gunning out of the Star Destroyers' docking bays, looking for all the galaxy like a swarm of bantulocusts. There were so many they partially obscured the view toward the Star Destroyers.

"Admiral?" Han queried. "Might as well get this show on the road."

"Yes," Ackbar said. "Solo, Calrissian, commence operations."

"You heard the man," Han commed to the Alliance fighters. "Go get 'em, boys."

With a roll of his eyes to indicate to Chewie that he knew this whole thing was absurd, Han flared the sublight engines and propelled the _Falcon_ toward the swarm, intent on breaking through the TIE fighters and causing some real trouble for the big boys who were still hanging back.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Tuelimi shuttle, Cantos and Rieekan at the helm, slowly drifted away from the Corellian freighter as it dumped its hidden cargo.

"Engage engines," Rieekan said.

"Engaged," confirmed Cantos.

The two ships parted, with the Tuelimi flaring its engines as the freighter continued to float toward the landing platform. Seconds later, a concussion wave rocked the shuttle, instantaneous with an ear-splitting explosion. Cantos and Rieekan struggled to maintain control, succeeding only after a few stomach-churning moments that provoked a few more shouts from Threepio.

Leia, pulling herself from her restraining harness, raced to the front of the shuttle. The freighter fron which they'd just detached had been blasted into pieces. Parts of it rained down on the landing platform while others, propelled outward by the blast, had set a nearby residential complex on fire.

"Guess they know we're here," Cantos muttered.

Luke hurried up to join them, looking out over the destruction. Although he'd been cautious to keep his mind closed except to Leia, whose presence was easy to isolate, he reached out with the Force to try to sense survivors. He felt none, but as soon as opened himself to the Force's vibrations, he felt the tendrils of the Sith reaching out to find him again.

_Welcome, Skywalker. And extend my greetings to your sister. I look forward to meeting her._

Luke quickly closed his mind and looked to Leia, stricken.

He knew. Essag knew everything.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Zakine silently watched the battle from the bridge of the Punisher_. _ As he'd planned, the Alliance fighters were having difficulty breaking through the swarm of TIE fighters, although that large Corellian freighter – he assumed it was the Millennium Falcon – had nearly made its way through. That barely interested Zakine. The approach of the cruiser carrying Klim Gital – that interested and confused him. The holocrypt message he'd received from Essag, ordering him to stand by to implement Order Three, _that_ completely shocked him, but likely not for the reasons the Emperor assumed.

"Admiral Samsa," called Zakine. "Has Klim Gital's ship docked?"

"Yes, sir, just a moment ago."

"I am leaving you in command, then, Admiral. I believe Admiral Gital may have information of some importance."

"Yes, sir."

"Comm me should an emergency arise," Zakine quickly signaled the lift and left the bridge.

Samsa wondered exactly what constituted an emergency to his superior officer if being mid-battle did not fit the bill. Yet he remained silent, as this was a sign of Zakine's faith in him and the possibility of future advancement. He could handle the Rebels.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Essag paced, panther-like, around his Palace Throne Room. He tired of waiting for the Rebels to come to him and he tired of Skywalker successfully closing his mind. So he paced, keeping an eye on the scenes from the battle above as the checkpoint holocams followed it.

The Millennium Falcon, that ancient dunghole of a ship piloted by Organa's lover, seemed to be at the heart of the battle along with several Calamarian dreadnoughts with a laughably small amount of firepower. Zakine had seemingly hidden half of his fleet, and kept the remainder of the Star Destroyers far from the fight, though, and Essag tired of that as well. The new technology aboard the Executors should be exploited.

"Commander, open a holochannel to the Punisherbridge," Essag ordered, sitting down on the Imperial Throne and engaging his holocam.

"Yes, sir," the officer replied. "You're connected."

"Moff Zakine, this is your Emperor," Essag spoke into the cam.

Quickly, an officer scurried into view. It was not, however, Zakine. A younger man, clearly nervous, bowed before him.

"Your majesty," stuttered the man.

"Where is Moff Zakine?"

"My Lord, he is…he has had to return to his quarters…briefly," the officer attempted to puff out his chest. "I am currently in command of the Outer Rim Fleet. What is your bidding, sir?"

Essag's eyes narrowed. He didn't need his Force sensitivity to tell him this youngster wasn't being entirely truthful. No Moff would retreat to his quarters during a battle with the Alliance. Not if he were loyal to the Empire.

"Why has he abandoned his bridge during battle, leaving an untested junior officer in charge of the last line of defense between Alliance starships and Coruscant?"

"Sir, my qualifications are-" replied Samsa, trying to stop his knees from knocking.

"Never mind, Admiral. I'll see to it that it never happens again. However, I am displeased that Moff Zakine – wherever he may be – has hidden half his fleet and neglected to display the newest addition to your arsenal on one of those Calamarian dreadnoughts."

"Yes, sir. He intended to do so once…I will inform him, sir."

"No, Admiral. You are in charge at the moment, so I am directing this order is to you. Engage the khyberlasers and show the Rebellion what they are up against. Immediately. Then order the rest of the Outer Rim Fleet to show itself."

"Yes, sir," Samsa saluted as the Emperor's holo faded out, although he knew the impossibility of implementing the second half of the Emperor's order.

Essag hurried into the command center adjacent to the Throne Room. He spotted Tyr Roga analyzing a printout and calculating the information it provided on the datawall in front of him.

"Pault's shuttle landed on the Punisher_, _did it not?" Essag demanded.

Roga nodded. "The trajectory of the cruiser would lead me to believe—"

Essag turned to Tyr Jolen, entering the command center behind him. "My previous order – the Outer Rim Fleet. Go. Take command now."

"Yes, sir," Jolen bowed and exited the command center, heading toward his Quad Ion, docked in the landing bay levels below the Palace. A shuttle would attract less notice, but he didn't like the idea of trading firepower for stealth. Not with the Alliance around.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Zakine felt the Punisherturning as he hurried into the airlock anteroom. What the deuce was Samsa doing? Had the Alliance ships broken through in such numbers that the Punisherhad to join the fight? He nearly commed to find out, when he saw Klim and Minister Pault disembarking from their cruiser.

"What is the meaning of this?" Zakine demanded. "In the midst of a battle—"

"Nev," Gital said soberly. "The Emperor intends to destroy us all."

"That's quite an allegation," Zakine replied, considering that it was not quite as outrageous an allegation as it would have been before he received Order Three.

"And entirely true," Pault chimed in.

"You must trust me, Nev," Gital continued. "We have little time. Minister Pault must secure the Imperial Treasury-"

Zakine shook his head. The men were talking nonsense. "I will do nothing until all is explained. Quickly."

"And I will explain nothing in the middle of an insecure dock," Pault bristled.

Zakine considered his next move. He could feel the Punishercompleting its turn, and he didn't like it, but he could comm Samsa from his quarters. The men before him had taken a vastly risky step at the same time as the Emperor issued an incredibly unusual order. He'd hear them out.

"The conference room adjacent to my quarters is entirely secure. I will give you a _very_ short time to convince me of your allegations."

He led the men out of the airlock, never noticing the small Quad Ion tracking closer on the docking bay radar.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Those TIEs are on a suicide mission, Chewie," Han commented as he blasted yet another out of the sky. "They're just keepin' us busy." He groaned as an easy shot from the Falcon's turret gun went wide. "Sure woulda helped if they gave us humans instead of those ancient spotter droids to man the guns."

Chewie grumbled in agreement. Droids in any form weren't Han's favorite thing, and even though Chewie had no particular gripe with droids, he believed that sentients, with their powers of intuition and perception instead of reliance on pre-programmed algorithms, were demonstrably better in battle.

**Look!** Chewie pointed.

Han looked up to see one of the Executors moving, turning to starboard to face the battle it had so far ignored.

"Guess they decided they can't just sit there and watch," he muttered to Chewie before opening the comm. "Admiral Ackb—"

Five green lasers shot out of the lead Executor, then focused into one.

"Kest!" Han banked the Falcon steeply into a barrel role to avoid the blinding laser, then turned rapidly to see a billowing explosion far behind him, right where Home One used to be. Han felt a momentary nauseous twinge as he realized Admiral Ackbar and the thousand soldiers on Home One were lost. He liked Ackbar well enough, and now there was nobody around who could override any crazy orders Crix Madine may feel like giving. A part of him might have also slightly wish Mon Mothma had remained on Home One for the battle, instead of, as usual, being spirited away to a distant location to preserve the command. He shoved that feeling away; Leia would kill him for it. _Leia…_he couldn't think of her now.

"Dammit," Wedge cursed. "That kreffing thing has Death Star weapons."

"Yeah, I think we all saw it," Han replied. "Madine?"

Madine, standing over a monitor on the Freedom, another Calimarian dreadnought, read out the data. "Yes. That was a khyberlaser."

"Well, that makes things interesting," Han blasted another TIE fighter, then noticed a Quad Ion heading toward the Executor that had just destroyed Home One. "Hey—"

He'd had enough of these odd interruptions. The Imperials always locked down for battle. No Imperial plan he'd ever seen involved this kind of tactic, and he was sick of it. He gunned the Falcon toward the Quad Ion, which, he knew, put him right in the line of the Executor's fire.

"Solo!" Madine shouted.

Han didn't listen. He didn't really care what was up with the ship landing in the middle of the battle, but he wanted to blow something other than a TIE out of the sky in revenge for the death of Ackbar. The Falcon sped faster and faster toward the _Punisher, _nearly catching up to the Quad Ion, but also nearly catching itself in a tractor beam. Chewie shrieked a warning as Han wrenched the Falcon away, seeing the blast of an explosion in the docking bay as the Quad Ion docked forcefully against an airlock.

"Solo!" Madine repeated. "Solo, report back!"

"Whatever that shuttle wants, Madine, the Fleet doesn't want him around. He came in hot – he's hostile."

Just to burn off some frustration, Han tried to tease one of the smaller Star Destroyers into chasing him with a little fancy flying, but no luck. Fortunately, though, a TIE chasing the Falcon spun out of control and hit the Destroyer right its tiny weak spot – the forward viewport of the bridge. It was just dumb luck, Han knew, because those viewports were nearly impossible to target, but he felt a great deal of satisfaction when the Destroyer went down, spinning out of control into Coruscant's shield and then exploding in a fireball.

"Great," Han sighed. "Only fifty-nine Star Destroyers and four Executors with some kind of Death Star technology to go."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

As the Tuelimi shuttle continued toward the Palace Platforms, the Attack Team agreed that they would need to modify their plans. A landing was too risky, given that the battle of Coruscant had gone hot the moment the Corellian freighter had been vaporized. They'd heard Dodonna give the go order to all remaining Alliance troops, and the confusing sounds of the land and low sky battle had filled their comm for the last ten minutes as the Rebels progressed through the streets toward the Imperial Palace, which they would surround after the Attack Team entered. If the team failed to extract or kill the Emperor, the Palace would be destroyed, although the Alliance desperately hoped to preserve the building and its technology, which would be a treasure-trove of Imperial secrets.

Rieekan decided on a low-slow drop of the team; they'd jet pack to the ground. The droids would stay on the shuttle and in contact as necessary.

"Princess, you ever used a jetpack?" Cantos asked.

"No." Leia tried not to remember that the last time she'd seen one in use, the galaxy's most feared bounty hunter had lost control of it after being bumped by a blind man and then met an ignominious end in a Sarlaac pit. "They don't seem to be the most reliable technology in the galaxy."

"There's another problem," Luke said. Leia needed to know what he'd sensed. So did Rieekan, although Luke knew well that he was using Rieekan to get the result he hoped for. "Leia, I think you need to stay on the shuttle with the droids."

Leia's face flushed with anger. Luke raised a hand to warn her to listen before flaring up.

"Essag has sensed my presence – and, more concerningly, yours. I think he wants both of us to come to him, but he's more interested in capturing and making an example of you."

"I don't care what he wants," Leia answered furiously, feeling all of their eyes on her. "If he wants us to come to him, we do it and we give him more than he can handle. And as far as leaving me here, if I knew you were going to pull that kest on me, I would be on the Falcon right now. And I'm not. So I'm damn well going, because I'm here and I'm your only map to an unmapped sector of this kreffing planet!"

She looked back and forth between Luke and Rieekan, daring them to leave her behind.

"I'm trying to keep you away from a powerful Sith who somehow knows of your presence on this planet, Leia," Luke said, while simultaneously sending her the silent message: _He knows everything._

He felt Leia's silent shock at the silent message; she had thought that Essag wanted her because she was a high-value Alliance target, not because…she hesitated, knowing that she was one step closer to having her truth revealed publicly, but her face continued to betray nothing but her anger.

"When has trying to protect me from the greatest monsters in the galaxy ever worked before?" she asked, while silently replying _I will not hide._

Rieekan stood watching them, agonized by Luke's revelation, since the final decision whether Leia stayed on the shuttle or went to ground was his. It didn't surprise him that the new Emperor wanted to capture Leia. She had always been a high-value target, given her noble lineage, and torturing and killing her would send a strong message to the Rebellion and those in sympathy with it. She was also the only surviving member of the royal family of Rieekan's home planet. He and the other Alderaanians in the Alliance would die for her solely because she was their Princess, unlike those Alderaani who had sat out the war in hiding on Coruscant, after their planet had been destroyed and their consulate decommissioned. He was loathe to put her in danger even greater than that she was in right now, and a showdown with a desperate Sith Emperor felt like a step too far. Yet Leia was right – she was their only map to that which remained intentionally unmapped. Without her, they were walking blind into the Palace. That would harm the Rebellion as a whole, which was bigger than any one person, even the Princess he'd known since she was a little girl and whom he loved like a daughter.

"I'm sorry, Commander Skywalker," Rieekan said slowly. "We need the Princess with us. But every one of us will see to it that she is not taken by Essag."

Luke nodded in assent. He would obey the order, but he knew that despite Rieekan's words, no one on the Attack Team had any chance of protecting her from a Sith. Only Luke could do that; he hoped that he was still strong enough after the injuries of the last few days to do what may need to be done. He also noticed Leia looked satisfied – too satisfied. For all she had seen, she still didn't understand the terrible power of the Dark Side of the Force. The Empire had inflicted all of their damage on her using conventional techniques; she'd seen Vader Force pull Han's blaster from his hand, but her experience of the Force in battle went no further. Luke knew that his descriptions of his battles with Vader and the Emperor translated in her mind in those same conventional terms, because a battle of Force-users was impossible to describe as the mental struggle to control your mind, and keep the other from using your mind, your fears, and your weaknesses against you was the biggest challenge of all. Now he understood, more than ever, Yoda's desire to prevent his rush to Bespin. He had no time to prepare Leia for the onslaught of darkness and no time to teach her how to remain in the light. He wasn't even sure he yet had the capacity to teach it.

"Let's move out," said Cantos, clamping the jetpack to his back and securing Leia tightly into his forward harness. "Don't worry too much, Skywalker. None of us will survive a day if Solo finds out we let something happen to his girl. That's plenty of incentive."

With that, he forced open the exit hatch and, with a blast of the jetpack, propelled himself and Leia toward the level on which the Palace District was built. Leia saw the walkways of the Palace District rapidly approaching; unlike the rest of Coruscant, the Palace District was walkable. One could pretend when walking through the Palace District – if there weren't so much damn evil everywhere – to be in any wealthy city, not on a level of Coruscant built on top of one hundred other levels.

"Sorry, Princess," Jax hit the ground hard and unbuckled Leia's harness. The rest quickly followed, ditching the jetpacks so that they could retain at least some semblance of their disguise as Imperial officials. It wouldn't fool anyone who looked very hard, but at least it would keep citizens, already stunned and scared by the battle, from looking too hard.

Luke landed last, his feet lightly touching the ground despite the thirty meter fall. He'd eschewed a jetpack, and his groan upon landing came not from the jump, but from the sensations that assaulted him as soon as his feet touched the structures of the planet.

"Can you sense it?" Leia asked quietly as they started to move. She already felt the same desire to scream with terror that she'd always felt on the planet.

"Yes. I feel…" Luke studied his feelings for a moment. The feeling was somehow familiar, but he couldn't place it. It wasn't exactly the feeling he'd had at the cave, it was more – yes, he remembered it now. "There's a darkness. I can sense the power of the Sith in this place. But it's like a vision I had when I was on Dagobah. I had a vision of you and Han on Bespin. Fragmented images. But the feelings – fear, suffering, pain of innocents – I feel them here. But magnified," he concluded, not daring to explore this anymore lest he open his mind to Essag.

"Well, at least I'm not alone in hating this kreffing planet," Leia said.

"I am so telling Solo about your gutter mouth when we get back to the fleet, Princess," Cantos laughed.

"He'll only love me mo-" Leia stopped midsentence, grabbed her blaster, and fried the Stormtrooper hiding behind a large sculpture of Palpatine ten meters away before he could raise his blaster. A platoon of Stormtroopers poured out of an alley behind the sculpture.

"So much for the fancy get-ups serving as protection," Cantos yelled as he took out several more.

The acrid smell of blaster fire filled the air as the team battled the oncoming troopers. Once she was certain that all the troopers were visible and engaged in the battle, Leia pulled a small thermal detonator from her ops bag and armed it. She knew that they weren't approved Alliance weapons, but she had to admit she was fond of them. Besides, they'd assure this skirmish ended quickly. She shouted a warning to her compatriots, then tossed the detonator right into the midst of the platoon.

Moments later, the skirmish ended rather one-sidedly when the detonator did its thing.

"Well, that'll learn 'em," Cantos observed to Luke as the team hurried on.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Tyr Jolen exited his ship, his red robes billowing about him, his Tolumbian scythe at the ready.

"Freeze!" commanded the unlucky officer manning the docking station.

"The Emperor orders you to take me to Moff Zakine," Jolen responded.

"I have received no such order," the officer replied. "Nor did you request or receive permission to land. I'll have to check."

Jolen swung out with his scythe, blue flames appearing on its blade as soon as he swung. He struck down the officer while simultaneously redirecting the blasts the rest of the docking crew managed to get off, killing or wounding them all.

"Permission will be unnecessary," Jolen said sarcastically as he stepped through the mess he'd left and continued toward the bridge.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This, Admiral Samsa thought, was an emergency: A Redrobe stood before him insisting that he be brought to Moff Zakine. He seemed none too patient, either, as his hand played alarmingly on his scythe.

"He is in a secure meeting in his quarters," Samsa told the Redrobe. "I will alert him to your arrival."

"No need," replied the Redrobe, sweeping off the bridge just as the first reports of a massacre in the docking bay began to come in. Samsa realized, too late, that the Redrobe's apparently hostile approach and docking wasn't an accident. He WAS a hostile. But he was a hostile sent by the Emperor who had just congratulated Samsa for doing what Moff Zakine did not in utilizing the khyberlasers to destroy the Alliance dreadnought.

Samsa didn't quite know where his loyalties should lie at the moment. He considered remaining silent and allowing things to play out a bit more. But a Redrobe here on the Punisher…that seemed inappropriate. Even the Emperor, a former Redrobe, must know how the military disliked the Royal Guard, who worked and trained outside the military's purview. The very word "Redrobe" was originally demeaning military slang for the Royal Guard and their flashy attire. He didn't like having one of them on his ship. Not at all.

"Moff Zakine—" he commed.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Samsa's voice broke through the silence in Zakine's quarters. The visitors had just finished telling Zakine their story, and Pault had made his pitch that he, Gital, and Zakine act as a triumvirate to overthrow the Emperor and bring the reign of mystics to an end. Zakine found that a tempting proposal. He hadn't, however, shared with the visitors the information he'd received regarding Order Three.

"Moff Zakine, we have a Redrobe aboard "

"Does this relate to your use of the khyberlaser, Admiral?" Zakine had heard them as he headed toward his cabin.

"That was an order of the Emperor – I shall explain, but I believe the Redrobe is hostile. Men in the docking station have been killed, and he is heading toward your quarters." Samsa thought it better to overlook the part he'd played in sending the Redrobe toward Zakine's quarters.

"Are you convinced now, Moff Zakine?" Pault asked. "The Emperor has sent his own guardsman here, likely to kill you."

"Yes, I believe he has," Zakine replied. "Samsa, send troops to intercept and kill the Redrobe. I am on my way."

Zakine hurried the men out of his quarters. They would return to the bridge via the ship's repair catwalks. It would take slightly longer, but it would guarantee there would be no run-ins with the Redrobe. Zakine entered his code for the repair hatch and engaged the catwalk to move at its fastest speed. The men stepped in, the catwalk carrying them through the Punisher's innards. They could see groups of military mechanics floating in the superstructure, which rose almost five kilometers high. The newly-installed khyberlaser glowed in the distance, powering down from its display. Zakine had always admired the vast emptiness of the ship's skeleton. Today was no different.

"You should know," he told the men behind him, "that the Emperor has ordered this fleet to carry out Order Three upon the giving of his word."

Pault had assumed as much. Gital, however, appeared thunderstruck.

"Order three," Pault repeated. "What do you intend to do with that order?"

Zakine shrugged. "I intended to consider it. And now I wonder if we should consider implementing it sooner rather than later."

"Sooner?" Gital exploded. "You can't implement it at all!"

"I disagree," Pault replied. "The Emperor has ordered a battle on Coruscant of such violence that will assure it is of no utility in the future. Then he will implement Order Three to terminate the remaining sentients. By that time, all useful infrastructure will have been damaged beyond repair."

"—so instead we implement early, and perhaps - if we destroy him while he remains on-planet and before he can destroy the Imperial infrastructure – the planet will remain useful and we have allowed our Empire to continue in its capital," Zakine concluded.

"I agree," said Pault.

"You cannot be serious, Nev," Gital pleaded. "The people of Coruscant do not deserve this fate."

"No, they don't," Zakine agreed. "But it is the only way."

"To kill one man, you will kill billions—"

"To end the reign of the mystics, destroy the Rebellion, and begin a reign based solely on power and reason, we will unfortunately sacrifice billions," Pault corrected.

Zakine forced open the bridge escape hatch and climbed through. He offered an arm to Pault, who struggled onto the bridge after him. Then he offered his hand to Gital, who remained on the catwalk below, staring up at Zakine.

Gital remembered the dark of the beyond and felt that, this time, the choice to walk towards it or away from it was within his control.

"I cannot," he said. "I cannot participate in this wanton slaughter."

"Then your utility is at an end," Zakine replied and slammed the escape hatch closed. He turned to Pault. "We are in agreement. Our plan will save the Empire, and I expect you to follow through on your offer of shared leadership. Should you hesitate, you would be wise to remember the extent of the military might under my control, and the fact that you are seeing only half of it today."

"I will not renege," Pault bowed.

"Then get to your shuttle. We will rendezvous with the rest of the Outer Rim Fleet at Tromma after the battle is complete and you have secured the treasury. Go."

Pault quickly left the bridge as Zakine turned to his men, barking a new set of orders.

"NO ONE gets on or off this bridge unless I command it. I want a platoon of troops stationed at the lift and each emergency exit panel. Send another four detachments out to patrol the ship."

He turned to Admiral Samsa, whom he wasn't sure he trusted anymore. But it didn't quite matter, either.

"Samsa, open the comm to the fleet."

"Yes, sir," Samsa pressed several buttons on his control panel. "Done, sir."

"Loyal commanders of the destroyers and Executors of the Outer Rim Fleet, this is Moff Zakine. We have received orders from our Emperor. Banisher, Vengeance, and Judgment, you are to take up the coordinates I am currently transmitting, which will put you at magnetic ninety from each checkpoint." He punched several datacodes into the computer and transmitted. "Destroyers, deploy to the coordinates I send now."

He paused to assure he had the attention of every man in the fleet.

"As commanded by Emperor Essag, we shall implement Order Three."

Zakine had never heard his bridge so silent. He was sure every other bridge in the fleet was quite as silent. He enjoyed that respectful response to his command.

Beneath his feet, among the mechanical catwalks of the _Punisher_, Klim Gital, hearing the order, wondered what he could possibly do. Then he began to run as fast as his legs would carry him.

.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The moment the first Executor moved a meter, Han noticed it. Then another started to move. Then the Star Destroyers came to life and followed.

"They're changing formation," Han commed to the Alliance.

Chewie growled; the formation trajectories didn't make sense if they intended to come after the Alliance ships, but it also made no sense for them to turn tail and run right now.

"Unless the Emperor was on one of those shuttles that landed," Han said, then paused as he watched the movement of the Outer Rim Fleet. "Wait a minute…"

The first of the four Executors halted; it stopped at the planet's north pole, hovering directly above one of the checkpoints. The second Executor seemed to be lining up with one of the two equatorial checkpoints.

"I think we got a problem here…" Han mumbled. The same fear he'd felt when being led into the carbon freezing chamber had suddenly setup shop in his stomach. If his instincts were right this time, and he hoped they were entirely wrong, then…

"Lando, Madine, I'm gonna take a spin of the planet. Cover me."

He flipped off the comm before he heard whatever angry squawk Madine put up in response and took the Falcon into a wide orbit to get a better look at the formation. Just as he'd thought, the Executors had arrayed themselves in positions that would allow them to lock their weapons onto the checkpoints. The Star Destroyers lined up around the equator and the prime and antimeridians, encircling the planet at evenly-spaced distances. Han felt himself starting to sweat. He'd been in bad situations before, but this one…

Finishing his circle of the planet, Han flipped the comm back on. "Guys? We're in big trouble."

"Solo, explain."

"The Coruscant shield is generated from magnetic forces located at both poles and two nucleomagnetic focalizer units built at the equator, and the checkpoints regulate the power flow, right?"

"Yes," Madine said.

"Look at the formation. Executors locked onto the checkpoints. They carry ion disrupters in their arsenal. Not all that useful in battle, but they start pulsing those checkpoints with ion disruptors while the Star Destroyers fire their primary lasers at the shield, dispersing the disruption shield-wide—" Han felt sick at the thought of it.

"Then the shield blows," Madine replied.

"No," Lando corrected him. He saw it now; he knew exactly what Han was getting at. "At least not quickly. The ion disrupters will supercharge the shield for a long while first. The lasers will superheat it. And the shield will act like a greenhouse, drawing the heat in and holding it, instead of dispersing it out into space. Eventually, the shield will blow. But not soon enough…not before the planet becomes inhospitable to life forms."

"Gods…" Madine whispered. Even his battle-toughened psyche had difficulty taking it in. Billions of people – including most of the Alliance forces – dying in one of the most awful ways imaginable. But how typical of the Empire to figure out how to kill millions while guaranteeing the planet's technology remained useful.

Han spun the Falcon around to look at the Outer Rim Fleet, perfectly positioned to carry out utter destruction. _Leia…._

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Attack Team continued toward the Palace. Leia struggled against the increasing dread she felt at the idea of entering the looming Palace and her disgust at the violence of the battle around her. She'd never seen the Imperials fight like this before. Clumsy AT-ATs and AT-STs, never meant for urban warfare, thundered through the streets, indiscriminately firing and crushing as they went. Mined buildings collapsed with no warning when Rebel low-altitude fighters got too close. The AT-ATs and TIE squadrons were picking off those fighters like flies, as the Rebel fighters tried fruitlessly to avoid civilian casualties. But as they were picked off, they spun out of control to the ground, causing the very casualties that they were trained to try to avoid.

The citizens ran, crazed with fear, as the team pressed on. Blaster fire rained in all directions. The populace had realized that the Empire had abandoned them, so they turned on their Imperial masters, firing at anyone and anything that looked Imperial, including their fellow citizens. Fortunately, Cantos had warned the team kilometers back that their Imperial robes were turning from disguise to target, and they had abandoned the disguise in favor of their Rebel fatigues.

"Help me, please, help me," a badly wounded woman stumbled up to Leia, holding a crying toddler in her arms. "Please, save my child – take my son."

Leia froze. Every moral in her being insisted she help this woman and her son. This child – twenty years ago, it could have been Leia, could have been Luke as their mother fled the fall of the Old Republic. Thirty years ago, it could have been Han on Corellia. Instinctively, she reached out her arms to the child, only to be blocked by Cantos.

"Princess, I'm sorry. You can't. You just can't. We have to keep moving—"

He pulled her forward, away from the woman seconds before a burst of laser fire erupted where they had just stood. Leia turned to see the woman on the ground as the toddler screamed in terror next to her, before another crowd of people obscured her view of the child.

Leia fell to her knees and vomited. It was all too much – the dread and the ugliness and the orphaned child. Luke came to her side and helped her up, seeing that she was crying angry tears.

"You okay?"

Leia shook her head and continued forward, knowing that she'd just seen yet another image from this war that would haunt her until the day she died. _Damn the Imperials_, she thought. _And Goddessdamn_ _Essag straight to however many hells Corellia had._ She wanted him dead, and she was going to see to it that it happened, no matter what Luke had to say about anger and the Force.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I need an estimate," Han commed Madine. "Once they start firing, how long do we have to take them out before-"

"Working on it." Madine turned to Lieutenant Graph, his Calimarian assistant, who was running calculations.

"Survival for carbon-based life estimated at approximately eight minutes. Silicon and germanium-based, up to ten."

"I heard that," Han replied. Eight minutes…seven minutes to be safe. _Leia…_ He snapped back into focus. No. She wouldn't die down there. He wouldn't let her. Not Leia, not Luke, not Rieekan. Not while he could do anything about it. He turned to the comm.

"Ears up, everybody. You know what we're up against. I'm guessin' that means the Emperor was on one of those shuttles we saw and the Alliance troops on the ground…" Han cleared his throat, "are in trouble. We also know that the only reliable weak spot on a Destroyer or Executor is the forward viewport, because a direct hit on it depressurizes the ship and disables its control. We also know that hitting those viewports dead on is a matter of luck. I'm not asking anybody…yet," he hesitated, "to go on a suicide mission, but I'm tellin' you to get as close as you can to those Executors and throw everything you got – photos, ions, lasers, whatever you got aboard – at those viewports. If you can run a Destroyer on your way back to your next shot at an Executor, do that too. But those Executors have to come down, because once they start shooting—"

Chewie growled and pointed. The Executors had begun to fire. Green ion disruptors pulsed down on the checkpoints. Then the Destroyers engaged their lasers, creating an ionic storm over the shield.

"We got less than eight minutes, starting now," Han said. "I'm up first."

Han swung the Falcon around to attack position. He'd attacked a few Star Destroyers in his day, but Executors…this was a first. As the Falcon tore through space toward the Punisher, firing every laser on board, Chewie growled to Han.

**You have any ideas if this doesn't work, Han?** Chewie could think of only one, and he was wondering if Han had considered it too.

"Yeah, I got one," Han replied. "But I'm really hopin' we don't have to do it."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Only one more kilometer. The screaming hell of the battle was behind them now. Citizens and citizen housing were banned from this part of the Palace District. The only residences in this district were for the very highest Imperial officials, high councilors and the like – all of whom the Rebel plant, Sevik Dahn, had informed them were rumored imprisoned or killed on Essag's order.

They had picked up Dahn at the entrance to the restricted corridor of the Palace District, where he was, as promised, waiting, dressed as an Imperial corpsman. Dahn, a Dantooinian who was, in Leia's estimation, perhaps the greatest spy who had ever lived (and whose name, she knew, was not acutally Sevik Dahn, although for security reasons she only knew this alias), had been embedded by Mon Mothma in the Empire twelve years ago, at the very dawn of the modern Rebel Alliance. He had managed, somehow, never to be found out or turned, providing impeccable information and now serving as their entry to the Palace. How he managed to assume the identity of a defense tech, she would never know.

He had bowed to the Princess when they first met at the restriction gate, but she felt that she should be bowing to him, and she said as much.

"Princess," He replied, "I may have the code to the Palace, but only you can get us to the Throne Room. My placement is in the executive offices and I may go no further without discovery."

She nodded, "I understand. I can get us there. And then perhaps tomorrow you will be free to live a new life, Sevik."

"That would be much appreciated," he replied, bowing again before he turned to Luke, who had been eying him curiously. "Yes, Jedi Skywalker, you are correct," he said. "I am not a Jedi, but I believe I have some Force-sensitivity. There is no other way to explain my ability to survive, hidden, at the heart of the Empire for so long. I am not trained in any way, but the Emperors seem unable to sense me. Nor can I accurately sense anyone. I can hide in plain sight, and I can impact the weak-minded. We will have to discuss this later. But we must go."

They raced through the hidden alleys leading directly to the tertiary entrance to the Palace. Leia worried for a moment that she wouldn't be able to navigate from it. But as she saw the location of the entrance, she calmed. Yes, she remembered where they were.

They skidded to a stop as a harsh crackling sound in the skies grabbed their attention. The blue sky had turned hazy as lightning coursed in all directions across the canopy of the shield. Soon after, they felt the heat.

_Han…_Leia thought_. Gods what is happening up there…_

"Electromagnetic storm?" Cantos asked.

Rieekan shook his head. "Someone's bombarding the shield. That wasn't our game plan."

The lightning continued to crackle; the heat continued to grow more oppressive by the moment. A deathly yellow pallor settled over the planet as the haze collecting beneath the shield obscured the sun.

As Dahn punched his code into the entrance, Rieekan voiced aloud the thought that everyone on the team had considered once the bombardment of the shield began.

"If the Emperor is not on-planet any longer, this could all be for nothing."

Cantos nodded. "But why would they be bombing if the Emperor hadn't escaped?"

"Because every Imperial officer is now battling for power," Dahn quickly replied. "It's not that the Emperor could not control the Empire. It's that he doesn't care to. But I believe him still to be here, in his Throne Room. In truth," Dahn looked to Luke and Leia, "I don't believe he intends to leave without you."

Leia thinking of the small boy in the street, looked directly at Dahn, an obstinate look on her face that reminded Luke of Han.

"Good," Leia said. "We're going to make him regret that."

The Palace door swung open and a further blast of heat met them. Ketor marble; the only marble that radiated heat instead of absorbing it. Leia could already feel the sweat pouring down her back, and as she stepped into the Palace, she was nearly brought to her knees by that omnipresent sensation of death. She bent over, trying to catch her breath. The heat wasn't helping. Nor was her concern about what was happening to Han among the stars above the planet. She forced herself to breathe deeply as Luke put an arm around her waist.

"How can you stand it?" she panted. "The sensation…"

"It's awful," Luke agreed. "But I've been trained. I can manage it."

"It's worse than it ever was before."

Luke leaned close to her, unwilling to even open his mind for a moment while in Essag's Palace, even if he was taking a risk in saying something to Leia that the others may hear. "Because you know now that you're Force sensitive; you acknowledge it and can sense it, but you can't control it yet. Someday you will," he promised her, before continuing more loudly. "Come on, Leia, let's go."

"You alright?" Cantos gave her the side-eye as he entered the Palace, blaster drawn.

"Yes," Leia replied as she straightened up, unwilling to be a weak member of the Attack Team. "Just a lot of bad memories in this place, Cantos."

He nodded his understanding as he wiped the sweat from his brow. "I can imagine."

"I hope you can't." Leia looked around, and then pointed. "This way."

Dahn nodded. "But this is where I leave you. If I don't report back to Defense Command, I won't be able to relay your comm for your shuttle once Essag is down. Good luck, my friends. May the Force be with you." With that, Dahn was gone.

Leia led them forward, trying not to think about Han, but the steadily increasing heat steadily increased her concern for him. She couldn't afford to think about it, and she knew she wasn't strong enough to reach out with the Force and find him, but she couldn't resist what she knew was a pointless and weak attempt.

Trying to ignore the feeling that her trachea was burning with every breath of scalding air she took, she closed her eyes for a moment and called out into the universe.

_Han…_

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

They had four minutes left, and although they'd managed to take out five Star Destroyers – at the cost of twenty Alliance lives – it wasn't enough. It may have won the people on the planet a few extra seconds of life, but it wasn't nearly enough.

Han couldn't stop thinking of Leia. He didn't know for sure if she were dead or alive down there. But he knew for certain that if she were alive now, in three minutes she'd be dead, and he knew he couldn't live with himself if he could save her and didn't. He fired up the nav computer and started running a complex series of calculations, trying to act casual so Chewie wouldn't catch on and try to talk him out of it.

Chewie, looking out of the corner of his eye, knew exactly what Han was doing.

He would expect nothing less.

And, as difficult as it would be, he approved.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Essag, furious at the unfolding events and the poisonous treason of the Outer Rim Fleet, sent four more Royal Guardsmen out toward the Punisher. Jolen had somehow failed. The next four would not. But no matter the risk, no matter how many Guardsmen warned him that human life on the planet could not survive more than three more minutes, Essag refused to leave without his prize. His force powers gave him – and Skywalker, and perhaps Organa – a bit more time, perhaps long enough for the shield to burn out. He was not leaving this planet without his new apprentice.

_Han…_

Essag smiled. He heard her. The Princess, despite her weak and untrained mind, and despite the fact that an oafish Force-insensitive like Han Solo would have to be completely open to the Force to even hear the call of a fully-trained Jedi, was calling out to her lover.

_Han, please, hear me…_

He quickly located her presence. She was in the Palace. Perhaps they had a chance to make it out of here in three minutes. He ordered his shuttle to be warmed up.

"Guardsman, we are about to have visitors in the Throne Room."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Under two minutes left. His calculations done, Han took a deep breath, then disabled the comm for a moment and turned to Chewie, after they both saw that Vamati shuttle beating a hasty exit from the nearest Executor.

"Chewie, I need to you to go to the escape pod and get outta here. It's not any kinda guarantee that you'll get out of this okay, but—"

**No, Solo** Chewie replied heatedly. **I made you a promise.**

Han remained quiet. He'd expected an argument. "I'm going to try the Ennukian Maneuver. If I succeed, I need you to keep an eye on Leia for a while."

Chewie softened. He understood what Han wanted, and he understood why, but he couldn't do that.

**I'm sorry, my friend** he said. **I understand, but that will not be possible. My life debt is to you, Han, and I cannot abandon you to do this alone. The Princess – she will grieve you for the rest of her life, but she is strong. She will survive. But only if we succeed. And you have a better chance of succeeding if I help control the ship until the last possible moment, as you will lose consciousness before I do.**

"You have a family, Chewie," Han said softly, understanding more than ever before what that meant.

**As do you now, Han** Chewie responded.

Han looked away. There was no way he was going to get Chewie off this ship, and if this scheme worked and Han's calculations were correct, they'd both be instantly vaporized, but they'd take all the ships firing at the shield with them. The Falcon would hit hyperspeed just as it crossed the first ion disrupter stream and drag disrupted ions along the trajectory of the disintegrating Falcon as it slingshot partway around Coruscant before turning to space dust. That would pull the planetary shield outward, like a rapidly expanding bubble, and it should slam into the ships firing on it, destroying them all, before the shield disintegrated itself.

Theoretically.

But Han would never know if it worked, because he'd be space dust along with the Falcon. The life he'd just begun to hope for – a life with the war over, married to Leia and maybe raising a family, even just waking up next to each other for the next sixty years – that life was over. All he could hope for now was that there was an eternity, and someday he would see Leia again.

**Han?** Chewie wuffled softly. **We have less than a minute**

"Right," Han replied. He turned the comm back on. "Alliance ships, this hasn't worked. Everybody back off."

"Solo?" Madine queried.

"No time to discuss this, Madine. It's our last chance. Just do as I say."

"Roger," Madine replied. He was out of ideas, and willing to let Solo try anything that had a chance.

Han flipped comm channels and signaled Lando on a private channel they'd set up before the battle.

"Don't you dare, Solo," Lando said tightly. "I know what you're thinking, and nobody knows if that's gonna work."

"You got any better answers, buddy?"

Lando's silence was all the answer Han needed. No, there was no other way.

"Lando, I need a favor," Han continued. "Leia—" His voice caught, but he had to go on. "Tell Leia that I want for her—I want for her what she said in her note. And tell her I love her. Always."

"Han—" Lando tried to get the words out. "Don't—"

Han laughed softly as he remembered something he'd said to Luke long ago. "Lando – better me than her. Solo out."

With that, he flipped off the comm and did one last check, making sure the nav computer had the ship aligned perfectly with the first ion disrupter beam. He confirmed – it was. He took one last look around the ship he so loved but, more than that, he thought about the woman who'd changed his life.

"Chewie, thanks." Han said, realizing it was now or never. "Thanks for everything."

**You saved my family, Solo. The thanks will always be mine.**

Han closed his hand on the throttle, hoping he had the courage to do this. With one last breath, he throttled up to capacity and heard the hyperdrive kick in. The last thing he saw in his mind's eye before he lost consciousness in the ion disrupter field was the face of the woman he'd love for as long as there were stars.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Zakine turned from the viewport just as the lift doors opened to reveal the Redrobe. The troopers fired cautiously, struggling not to damage the delicate systems on the bridge while taking down the intruder. The Redrobe was powerful, though, and he quickly made progress through the ranks, hurling aside trooper after trooper with his scythe.

"Officers, fire at will," Zakine shouted to the men on the bridge. He turned to his weapons officer. "Whatever happens, you do not disengage the ion disrupter, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," replied the young man at weapons, hoping that someone would take down the Redrobe before he needed to decide whether Zakine's command was worth his life.

XXXXXXXX

Klim Gital wound his way through the maze of the weapons systems, seeking out the secondary weps rig. He assumed that, like standard Star Destroyers, Executors had a secondary weapons control system hidden away in their superstructure in case their bridge controls became unusable.

There it was. Close by and to his left. Gital jumped into the rig and fired up radar, opened the small viewport, and enabled the datacomputers. According to the records, the Punisher had been firing on Coruscant for nearly seven minutes.

Gital, defeated, realized that he did not have nearly enough time to slice into the system - something Gital was no good at anyway - and disable the ion disrupters. The sentients on Coruscant would die. Klim Gital would be complicit in those billions of deaths, which made him no less a servant of darkness than the Emperor himself.

He looked out the viewport, hoping to come up with a brilliant plan. He spotted a freighter – the Millennium Falcon, owned by that smuggler who'd allied himself with the Rebels. The way the shop was orienting itself made it clear to Gital what the pilot intended. Gital couldn't stop him - the smuggler would either fail, and likely die in the attempt, or succeed, and absolutely die in victory. Either way, he stood a good chance of taking the Punisher out.

Gital knew he should feel some terror at that thought, as it consigned him to the eternity of darkness he now felt he deserved, but he felt only curiosity and a touch of envy. What a courageous man that smuggler was. Not only was he willing to face death, he had chosen death itself in service of something greater. Gital wondered if he could possibly share that man's courage.

"Too low, going to be too fast," Gital murmured as he looked at the data on the freighter as it completed its course change to direct it toward the Punisher. The Falcon's trajectory was a shade too low, it was traveling a hair too quickly, and at its current rate of speed and trajectory, it would miss the center of the disruptor by about seven meters and about a half-second too late. The Ennukian Hypothesis required absolute perfection.

Gital hesitated; he might live. The pilot would still die, for nothing, and the people on Coruscant would die. Gital could do something to change that – if he could stop his hand from shaking. He reached out and typed a code into the databanks which would reorient the ion disrupter just enough so that the center of the beam would line up with the ship. He couldn't do anything about the Falcon's speed, but maybe re-centering the beam would be enough, if Gital could only pull that off in time.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Admiral Samsa heard the wailing of the klaxon alarm over the noisy chaos on the bridge. He turned to the viewport, pointed, and opened his mouth to scream. In the bedlam, no one heard him. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Gital saw the ion disrupter wink out and then reorient itself a fraction lower. Within a millisecond, he heard the static crackle of the ion disrupter meeting the Falcon's hyperdrive engines. Now all he had to do was wait.

He felt the forces of the onrushing planetary shield tearing the ship apart. He felt himself lifted as the ship lost its artificial grav units. And then, just as he saw the fireball that would consume the Punisher and all the other ships in the Outer Rim Fleet, Klim Gital felt himself pulled away from his body.

He opened his eyes, and instead of feeling the eternal darkness he expected, Klim Gital saw light. The Force surrounded him in peace.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

The deafening explosions threw Leia and the rest of the Attack Team to the ground. Half delirious from heat, Leia covered her ears, wondering if she had just died and found herself in hell. It felt as if the explosions and the sharp quaking of the planet would never stop; she counted fifty-nine equally-spaced explosions before all went silent and still. She sat up woozily, wondering if she was only imagining that the acrid, hot air she breathed into her lungs seemed to burn a little less.

She strained to hear the voices of the Imperial servicemen in defense command, which the attack team had been about to disable when the explosions and quaking struck.

"That Rebel freighter—"  
"An old YT-1300—"

"Right into the ion disrupter—"

"The fleet. The Outer Rim Fleet. It's gone."

One officer, keeping his eyes on his monitor, interrupted the chatter. "Alliance fighters incoming. Outer Rim Fleet destroyed. The shield is down. Repeat, planetary shield down."

Leia vaguely heard the commotion as the servicemen as they abandoned their posts. The Rebels wouldn't have to take Defense Command after all. Leia barely noticed the Attack Team members looking at her in concern as she sought out Luke and looked into his eyes.

"He's gone," she whispered.

"You don't know that. Neither do I."

She stood up, turning toward the wall, trying to keep her composure. One by one, every foundation of her life was being yanked out from beneath her. A moment later, she turned to face the team.

"Follow me," she said grimly.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The Palace hallways were largely deserted. They encountered a few Imperial corpsman running through the halls, but these were men in the midst of desertion, not retreat. As he let one of them go instead of blasting him dead, Jax Cantos commented that these men were just too pathetic to kill.

The doors of the Throne Room, forty feet tall and sleekly carved in black tamorite, stood closed and foreboding, but entirely unguarded. It didn't feel right at all.

"This is a trap," Leia said, the tension clear in her voice.

Slowly, majestically, the doors opened, revealing Emperor Essag and eight Royal Guardsmen.

"It is not a trap, Leia Skywalker. It is your destiny."

Rieekan looked quickly at Leia, seeking some understanding of the use of "Skywalker" as her surname, but Leia stood stock-still, betraying no emotion as she drew her blaster on Essag and the men surrounding him, all the while knowing that ending this wouldn't be as easy as firing a blaster. Before anyone got a shot off, Essag Force pulled the blasters from their hands and dropped them to the floor in front of him.

Luke stepped out from the Attack Team, making sure he had Leia safely covered behind him.

"Essag," he warned. "The Empire has lost this battle. Your men are deserting. Your brief reign, Emperor, is now at an end."

"Son of Skywalker," Essag inclined his head. "You assume too much."

Luke felt Essag's sudden move and had his lightsaber lit and at the ready before Essag came up with his first swing. Luke quickly went on the offensive, opening his mind to the Force in a way he had avoided since he heard Essag's first taunt on Endor. The Force flowed through him, and he pushed Essag back, intent on separating him from Leia. Essag quickly regained his balance and parried, but Luke flipped over him and continued to press his advantage.

As the Guardsmen advanced menacingly on the Attack Team, their scythes drawn, Cantos turned back to his men and women, a bit cocky.

"Think they're in for a little surprise, huh?" he said with a smile, then, in the blink of an eye, he spun to face the leader of the Red Guard with his Cortosis Vibrosword out and at the ready. Cantos attacked mercilessly as the rest of the team followed, their vibroswords, which had been hidden ingeniously in their fatigues, drawn. Leia, unwilling to be useless in the battle, reached for her lightsaber.

_Not yet…_

She wavered as she heard the voice. In her moment's hesitation, a Guardsman grabbed her and threw her to the ground. He raised his scythe.

"Leave her alive!" Essag ordered, simultaneously reaching out with one hand and felling a Rebel who had come too close to interfering in his duel with Luke.

Cantos spied the Guardsman menacing Leia and rushed towards them, his vibrosword raised to come down and split the Guardsman's helmet in two. At the last second, the Guardsman turned on him. Leia saw Cantos making a fatal error, raising the sword too high to get greater leverage, thereby leaving his left side unprotected.

"Jax!" Leia yelled as the Guardsman buried his flaming scythe in Cantos' side, then twisted it and yanked it back out. Cantos turned fell to the ground quickly. As Leia grabbed for his vibrosword to finish his unfinished job, the Guardsman turned and quickly disarmed Leia by burning her right hand as he kicked the vibrosword away.

"I said leave her," Essag yelled, vaulting up into one of the parapets, Luke continuing to press.

"Yes, Master," the Guardsman turned away to engage another Rebel fighter.

Leia hurried to Jax to try to staunch the bleeding. She yanked a stapeglue pad out of her ops bag, noticing as she did that she'd already used all of her thermal detonators. Another weapon gone from her arsenal. She tried to cover Jax's wound with the stapeglue, but it was just too big and too deep.

"Let it go, Princess, I think he sliced through my lung," Jax wheezed. He tried to smile. "Besides, Solo would have killed me anyway for letting you into this situation."

She slapped the stapeglue pad on his side, knowing it was futile, but she couldn't sit there and do nothing as she watched him die. "Hold on, Jax –you can give Han the chance to kill you himself when you both get back to the fleet."

Through his pain, Jax heard the catch in her voice. They both knew they were playacting.

"I'm sorry, Princess," Jax said. "I'm so very sorry." His eyes slowly closed.

"Jax, come on. Jax—" Even as she urged him to live, Leia knew Jax Cantos was gone. She kept calling his name until she heard the unmistakable hum of a lightsaber right behind her. She looked up and saw Luke barreling toward her at top speed. He came to a skidding halt as he saw Essag standing within easy striking distance of Leia.

"Your lightsaber, Skywalker. Now."

"Don't do it, Luke," Leia said. "Don't."

Luke, however, immediately powered down the lightsaber. He knelt down to put it on the floor. Essag yanked it toward into his hand as soon as Luke stepped away.

"Tyr Loren, retreat," Essag ordered the surviving Guardsman. "And leave the general here."

As the Guardsman retreated to block the door to the throne room, Leia scanned the scene. The Attack Team had failed – they had taken out seven of the Guards, but at the cost of all of their lives. Only General Rieekan, wounded and breathing heavily, survived. He leaned against a pillar, his leg turned out at an odd angle. It broke Leia's heart, as if she needed it further broken, to see Rieekan. She had known him as long as she could remember. And now he would hear Essag revealing things that would shake his faith in her and in the Organa family whom he used to serve.

Essag wasted no time doing exactly that.

"Shall we now discuss your destiny, children of Vader?"

Rieekan looked incredulously at Leia, but she did not contradict Essag's words. Instead, she looked down, avoiding Rieekan's gaze, thus sadly confirming that the words were true. Despite his shock and his injuries, Rieekan suddenly remembered several late-night conversations with Bail Organa over too much Aldera wine. Bail worried so about his daughter's future, and now it all made sense.

_The poor girl_, thought Rieekan. _Bail never told her_… From the humiliated look in Leia's eyes, Rieekan could tell that her knowledge of her history was fresh.

"Essag—"Luke began.

"Darth Wraack, my Jedi friend. To you, and to your sister, I am Darth Wraack."

"To us you are nothing," Leia replied, standing to face Essag. "Your officers have revolted, your forces are deserting, and Alliance troops will soon surround this building and blow it to pieces should Luke and I fail."

"Were I interested in the fate of the old Empire, that should concern me. But the Sith Empire," he looked intently at Leia, "and the acquisition of my first Sith apprentice, those alone hold my attention."

"We will never join you, Essag," Luke intentionally chose to use his given name. "The Force is strong in my family, but even Palpatine – as hard as he tried – could never extinguish the light. Not even in Anakin. You will fail as well."

"Poetic talk about extinguishing the light, Skywalker," Essag snarled sarcastically. "But can't you feel it? Here, on Coruscant? Or here, within the Palace? This is where Vader extinguished the light forever."

Leia felt herself shiver involuntarily as she tried without success to block out his words. Suddenly, she didn't want to know why she and Luke both felt the darkness.

"Your sister feels it deeply. Yes, Leia Skywalker, you understand what happened here, don't you?"

Leia kept her eyes down, refusing to meet Essag's look. Her thoughts drifted toward her hidden lightsaber.

_Not yet…_

Essag laughed. "They never told you, did they, Princess? Bail Organa, Mon Mothma – all who knew what happened right where we stand. They protected you well from your true nature. Very well, I shall tell you. It was here that Darth Vader, apprenticed to Darth Sidious – whom you know as Emperor Palpatine—performed his first great act of commitment to the Dark Side. It was here, in the old Jedi Temple, that Darth Vader, your father, slaughtered one hundred Jedi younglings. I assure you, Luke Skywalker, the light went out. And I can understand, Princess, why Bail Organa protected you from this knowledge. Should you remain in ignorance, you could continue to follow the path of duty upon which he set you. Should you discover the identity of your father, and the nature from which you descend, how could he ever be sure you wouldn't fall to the Dark Side? How, indeed, could _you_ ever be sure you wouldn't fall to the Dark Side?"

Luke reached out and felt the pain coursing through Leia. He shared in that pain; he felt sure that Essag was telling the truth about the wanton slaughter of innocent children, an unimaginable crime – but Luke had grown secure in his identity of an adherent of the light. Leia, however…the last three years had been an exercise in stripping away every identity she'd ever known, and the last week had sped up that process to lightspeed. He could sense her struggle combined with her fear about Han's fate, which she was trying valiantly to suppress. Essag likely felt her struggle too and fed off of it.

Essag stepped closer to Leia, holding her chin and forcing her to look at him. Only her corruption mattered. He could handle Skywalker after he'd secured his apprentice.

"It always seemed such a waste, though. Those young ones, so strong in the Force, but untrained – that kind of mind can so easily be turned to serve the Dark, once it has accepted its destiny."

Leia understood that he was speaking about her, whatever he said about the children. She could feel him making his way into her mind. She was shaken, but Essag was mistaken about one very important thing.

"If you think I'm surprised, Emperor Essag, at any of the evil Vader did, you're wrong. Nothing Vader did surprises me – only disgusts me."

She yanked Essag's hand from her chin. Taking advantage of Essag's momentary surprise, Luke reached out, pulled his saber towards himself, and leapt between Leia and Essag, who only just managed to parry Luke's blows in time.

The battle between the evenly-matched Jedi and Sith continued as Leia made her way over to Rieekan and sank to her knees, the Guardsman hovering above them. She had come to her senses and thrown Essag off this time, but she could feel him making inroads into her mind and wondered if, in the end, she could resist.

.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Lando stared out into space, willing himself to see the Falcon reappearing in the distance. The X-Wings and Y-Wings had long since followed Madine's order and now patrolled the skies over Coruscant. According to Artoo and Threepio's reports, They still had no word from the Palace Attack Team, which made Lando profoundly nervous. It seemed impossible that he could lose all four of his best friends in one battle.

"Madine?" Lando commed. "My nav's giving me the coordinates on Han's last known trajectory. I'd like to—"

"General," Madine interrupted. "That maneuver leaves no room for survival."

"Theoretically. We've never seen it put into practice."

"Lando, the Falcon flew right into that Executor's ion disruptor. It was vaporized before it even took out that ship. Han's gone. I appreciate your sentiment, but permission denied. Return to fleet."

"Kest," Lando muttered. He didn't want to test the Alliance by disobeying the direct orders of higher-ranking officers within a month of joining up, and, further, Madine was right. A successful Ennukian Maneuver, as this one had clearly been, granted – theoretically - no possibility of survival. Any reasonable person would acknowledge that, sadly, Han and Chewie now belonged to the stars. But if the roles were reversed, and Lando had gone missing, Han Solo would not be a reasonable person. He'd tell Madine to stick it where the stars don't shine and check it out himself to make sure. So that's what Lando would do.

He turned to his co-pilot. "I'm going to disobey that order, Nien. I can't demand that you disobey it with me. The Vow has a powered and steerable escape pod, so if you want to, you can fly it back to the fleet."

**Yes, Calrissian, thank you, I'd prefer that** said Nien, nervously scurrying out of the cockpit toward the escape pod as if he feared Lando would take off for hyperspace before he could abandon ship.

"Well, okay then, I'll go on this fool's errand alone," Lando said to himself before raising his voice so that he was sure Nien could hear him. "But I sure wish you were more like Chewie!"

**Good luck, Calrissian** came Nien's muffled response over the comm as he ejected the escape pod. Lando watched to make sure the pod got safely away, then plugged the nav's coordinates into his hyperdrive. He was ready to go.

"Madine," Lando commed. "Consider my commission resigned."

With that, The Bespin Vow jumped to hyperspace.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Luke continued to battle Essag, whose fighting style was unlike those he'd encountered before. Essag wasn't any better than Vader, but he was more aggressive, taking more risks in the hope of coaxing Luke out into a less controlled form of combat. Luke wouldn't be budged – a lack of control implied anger; he'd been there in his battle with Vader and he didn't intend to risk using anger as a weapon ever again, even though he did feel a righteous anger at Essag's attempts to turn his sister. He would allow himself to feel it, but he would not allow himself to use it.

As he parried to block three short jabs from Essag's crimson lightsaber, he felt a momentary divergence in the Force. He was thrown off balance as he sensed a second Dark presence show itself momentarily then disappear. Essag flipped over Luke and landed on a walkway connecting the parapets.

"You felt it, did you not, Skywalker?" Essag demanded. "You felt that my old master Darth Plagueis and I are one. His knowledge – his intellect – lives on in me. You too could experience this, Skywalker. The power of the Dark Side is more a part of you than you even know. Perhaps more a part of the Skywalker twins than any sentients ever to live."

Essag stalked the walkway above Luke, daring him to give chase. He would not – he knew this was another attempt to coax him away from Leia, who remained with Rieekan, but listened intently to Essag's every word.

"Your words –allegations about the power of the Dark Side – remind me of Vader's empty promises on Bespin," Luke said. "But Vader is no more."

"Vader's extraordinary powers were diminished by his injuries – the injuries inflicted upon him by Obi-Wan Kenobi, your first master, who left Anakin Skywalker burned, crippled, and dying after defeating him on Mustafar. I'm sure Kenobi never told you of that, either. So tell me more about the 'good' of the Jedi. Tell me about how they never use the Force for attack."

Luke faltered momentarily. Essag knew just where to strike him, and Luke had never heard any of the tale Essag was telling. Again, it had the ring of truth. But it was irrelevant now. Ben was irrelevant now. Vader was irrelevant now. Only Luke and Leia had to survive in the light this day. The rest of his questions and concerns could wait.

"Yes, Skywalkers, your history will haunt you as long as you live, desperately trying to believe that your legacy is anything but dark. Children of a man with no father, no father except the Force, manipulated by Darth Plagueis to create life from lifelessness.

Again, Luke felt the sting of truth in his words, but Essag seemed not to be looking at him. He was looking at Leia. As Luke turned towards Leia, she looked back at him and saw the danger.

"No, Luke! Luke!"

With a flick of his arm, Essag used the force to cut a load wire dangling directly above Luke in two, showering him with toxic radium sparks. Luke cried out in pain and fell to the ground as Essag jumped to the floor, kicking away Luke's lightsaber and causing a statue to fall and pin Luke further.

Leia reached out, tentatively, with the Force to try to sense Luke's living presence. With relief, she felt Luke struggling his way back to consciousness.

"Oh, he's not dead yet, Princess. Unlike your lover."

Leia looked Essag straight in the eye. "You have no evidence."

"Tell me, Princess, who else in that battle would have been reckless enough – or motivated enough—to pull off a suicidal trick that takes out fifty-nine ships?"

Leia looked away, refusing to answer.

"Perhaps I should show you." Essag retreated to his throne.

"Princess," Rieekan said quietly, "whatever he shows you…you don't have to watch. Don't watch."

But she did. She needed to know. Essag punched in several codes on the datapad built into the arm of the throne. A shaky holo appeared, taken from a holocam at one of the checkpoints under attack. An Executor was visible in the distance, firing a green ion disrupter on the checkpoint. Then a blurred object obscured the beam for a fraction of a second and the Executor exploded.

"Repeat, one-hundredth speed, enhance," Essag ordered. The holo reset and replayed. This time Leia saw the ion disruptor oddly wink out for a frame or two before it reappeared skimming over the rear of a blurred ship.

"Information," Essag ordered.

The holo displayed, in Aurabesh:

Freighter, Corellian Engineering Corporation

YT-1300 Class (Modified for Speed)

Then it drew a schematic around the blurred outline. It left Leia with no doubt that she looked at the last moments of the Millennium Falcon and of Han. She felt her knees trying to give way, but she refused to let Essag see her crumble, no matter how badly she was crumbling on the inside.

"You hide your pain well, Princess. I congratulate you – truly – for that. And you hide your fear and anger well. Fear about what any restored Republic might become, given that so many who governed during its fall still live. Fear about whether politicians – as you have been trained to be – can ever truly be good. Fear about who you truly are. And then there's the anger: Anger over Alderaan, over the events on Bespin. Anger that you were raised ignorant of the truth of your legacy. And anger over what happened to your lover today. Yes, Leia Skywalker, you will make a fine Sith."

Leia remained silent, her heart pounding. He had seen through so much of her façade and spoke aloud her darkest thoughts. She didn't know how to keep him out. And she was beginning to see a new kind of truth in what he said.

"I told you Lord Plagueis could create life. His knowledge lives on in me. And I, Princess, can return the dead to the world of the living." He paused to let his words sink in. "I can bring him back, Princess. I can bring him back to you."

Leia could feel the conflict within her; so could Essag. She did not rebuff him, but as her mind worked quickly to evaluate his claim. She could not see how his offer could be true.

"Perhaps a demonstration is required,' Essag said. He stretched out, letting his power flow, and Leia saw Rieekan's face contort with pain has he collapsed.

"Carlist!" Leia cried out. She'd never before seen someone killed by the power of the Force; it was both horrifying and impressive. She rushed to his side, searching for some signs of life. She could find none. Like too many others, Carlist was gone. She tried to call out to Luke, but she felt only his living presence attempting to climb back to full consciousness.

"Are you convinced that your general is dead?"

"You're a monster. Just like Palpatine and Vader before you."

Essag smiled indulgently. He stood over Leia, letting his power flow once again. "Rise, General."

Leia watched, dumbfounded, as Carlist Rieekan's eyes fluttered opening. Trembling with fright, he looked at Leia. She turned to Essag in disbelief.

"Are you convinced now, my young apprentice?"

"Leia, don't believe him!" Luke called out.

"Ah. Your brother has joined us to watch you be turned."

_Leia, listen to me…_ She heard Luke's call, but she ignored him.

"If what your holo showed is true, Han is now space dust," Leia said.

"Everything is space dust before the luminous coalesces into matter. Consciousness, however, once born, is eternal. Even your brother will acknowledge that. Any body can be cloned – as we all know – and consciousness can be harnessed. Bow down before me as my apprentice, Princess, and we will go to Moraband where, I swear, the dark spectres and I will bring Han Solo back to you."

Leia considered Essag's words. Nothing he had done today exactly replicated what he claimed he could do for Han. But if there was even a chance…she could turn to the Dark Side, apprentice herself to Essag, and then – once Han had been resurrected – find her way back to the light. Through all her pain, Essag's offer began to make sense. She started to feel something very much like hope.

_Leia, don't _– Luke warned.

_This is my decision to make_, she snapped back. She turned away from Luke and Essag feeling, more than anything, Rieekan's pleading eyes on her.

Essag, sensing the conflict between the twins, smiled. He had her. "I'll give you a moment – but only a moment – to make your decision, my apprentice. To continue on alone, angry, and afraid, or to bow down before me and bring back the man you love."

Love. That one word snapped Leia back to reality. Love. The reason her parents hid the truth from her and risked their own crown and personal safety to raise her as their own child. The reason Luke had risked the wrath of Mon Mothma to come on this mission. The reason Rieekan was looking at her with such pleading in his eyes right now. The reason she had risked her life to save Han from Jabba the Hutt. The reason Han had risked his life to save her, again and again, on too many missions to count. And the reason he'd made the ultimate sacrifice of his life for her today. Love. Now that she recognized love, after so many years of trying to hide from it to blunt the pain it brought, she could not choose not to love in order to avoid the pain she felt at every loss.

Love. If she turned, there would no longer be such a word in her world. Even if Han could live again, he would return to find someone different – a woman he didn't know, a woman he couldn't love, and a woman who would never allow him to walk away from the dark, possessive, angry creature she would become. She would likely kill him before she ever allowed him to walk away, and that would seal her fate, binding her to the Dark Side for as long as she lived.

Han had sacrificed his life so that the woman he loved could live on. She owed it to him to be that woman. No matter how much it hurt, and no matter how much she would always want him back, she would live and die as the woman Han loved. She was embarrassed that, even for a moment, she had considered a different path.

"No," Leia, still facing away from Essag, said firmly. "I will not dishonor his sacrifice. And, like my brother, I will not be turned."

With that, Leia turned to face him, her brown eyes blazing in the light of the pale yellow lightsaber she'd just ignited for the first time.

.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

"Then, Leia Skywalker, like your lover, you and your brother shall also die."

Essag charged her, igniting his own saber, and their beams came together with a surprisingly solid crash. Leia felt the vibrations from the clash of sabers working their way up her arms, and hoped she remembered enough of her Thraca swordsmanship to survive until Luke could throw off the statue pinning him, which she sensed he was attempting, and that the lightsaber behaved enough like a real sword that she wouldn't accidently slice off her own head.

Luke finally gathered enough strength to free himself from the statue, and he used the Force to send it spinning toward Essag. Essag sliced it in two and sent it spinning away. As Luke rejoined the battle, he recognized that Leia was more than adequate – her swordsmanship didn't equal that of the two trained Force-adepts in the battle, but she could hold her own. Together, she and Luke were giving Essag as much as he could handle.

Sensing the remaining Guardsman abandoning his adherence to Essag's order not to join the fight, Leia held back until she felt his presence close behind her, then she spun out of his line of attack and sliced through him just as he raised his scythe. It took her out of the three-person battle for a moment, and she saw Luke driving Essag toward the corner of the room, where he would be trapped. She sprinted after them to help.

But Essag turned the tables by flipping over Luke, then using a column to vault himself toward Leia. He landed five meters from the Princes, who assumed a defensive stance. As Essag raised a hand, Luke realized what was about to happen. He charged, then propelled himself desperately into the air—

"Farewell, Princess," Essag murmured as he let the power flow.

\- and Luke landed just soon enough to spot the slight displacement in the air hurtling toward Leia. He caught a piece of it with the tip of his saber, but he was too late to deflect it entirely. Although the energy wave missed her chest, where it had been headed, a part of the wave caught her flush in the abdomen. Leia fell to the ground in searing pain. Luke wanted only to go to her, but Essag attacked hard, forcing Luke to return his attention to the fight while struggling to keep his whirling emotions under control.

Rieekan, seeing Leia go down, grabbed his internal comlink and commed Dahn. "Get the fighters in here. We need to extract. Now."

Leia, curled up in agony on the marble floor, tried not to scream in pain. She wondered if this was what it felt like to die. Maybe she would see Han again sooner than she expected. If so, she hoped the Force would just let this end, and let her move on. Teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, she vaguely heard Luke and Essag's sabers hissing and clanging behind her as she closed her eyes.

_ "My daughter."_ It was the voice she'd heard earlier, telling her not to reveal her lightsaber. She opened her eyes and saw a sad but kind-looking middle aged man in Jedi robes standing before her. A slight light shimmered around him. This must have been what Luke meant when he talked of Force Ghosts.

"Father," Leia whispered before catching herself and going silent.

_"Close your mind to him, Leia. You must close your mind."_

Leia hesitated. She owed Anakin Skywalker nothing. Not even the smallest obedience.

_"Daughter, I know the gravity of the sins I've committed against you. I do not ask – nor deserve – your forgiveness."_

She nodded. They agreed on that.

_ "You cannot understand this yet, daughter, but I failed where you have triumphed today, Leia. I fell because I failed to accept the true nature of love and the suffering that comes with it."_

Through her pain, she considered his words. She had come so close to falling herself, to abandoning herself to the Dark Side. She had almost considered her reasons – to save Han – noble and just. She had not known it was so easy to lose yourself forever, especially when a Sith was playing on unbearable grief for one you loved. If Anakin fell for similar reasons…

_ "Leia, time is short. Please – close your mind. Let Essag think that you have passed to the other side."_

She suddenly understood what Anakin was telling her. Close her mind, allow Essag to think she had died, and he would concentrate solely on Luke, leaving her open to approach from behind and end this. If she could get up.

She nodded. Anakin's ghost began to shimmer. She couldn't let him leave, not yet.

"_Father_," she whispered. "_I forgive you._"

Anakin looked almost abashed; he knew he was undeserving of her forgiveness. "_I don't know if we will meet again until the day you cross to eternity, but know this, although it is too late to say it, and too late to undo all my harm: I love you, my daughter. Now close your mind. You know what to do._"

Leia watched as Anakin's ghost shimmered and disappeared. She fought off the excruciating pain, thinking about her diplomatic training, about techniques she had been taught to use against sentient species who did possess mind-reading capacities. She was quite sure it was a different matter to shut her mind to a Force-adept, but she would try. She used a technique she'd learned to deal with Psions, making a plan, committing it to memory, then letting her conscious mind go blank so she could carry out the plan by rote. No feeling, no emotion, no pain…

"Leia, no!" Luke cried out as he felt her presence disappear.

Essag laughed. "You are alone, Skywalker. Your sister is gone."

Leia remained still for a moment, then slowly pulled herself up. Essag's back remained turned to her. She leaned down to pick up her saber, her conscious mind a blank, keeping it unlit as she silently walked up behind the battling Jedi and Sith. Then, when she was within easy striking distance of Essag, she let her mind come alive and lit her saber.

Essag, stunned, whirled to face her, and with the last of her strength, she drove her lightsaber into his stomach. Essag tumbled to the ground, a look of shock still on his face as he died, his lightsaber clattering to the ground beside him.

Leia collapsed in Luke's arms, unable to stay on her feet any longer. All the pain, physical and emotional, came rushing back. She looked up at Luke with tears welling in her eyes.

"Han…" she whispered before she lost consciousness. Luke could feel her fading fast.

Alliance troops burst into the room, led by Sevik Dahn. Dahn hurried to Luke and took Leia's limp body from the arms of the shaken Jedi.

"General Rieekan," Luke said through his daze. "He's wounded too. And Leia…we need to get her to a medical unit now. She's slipping away."

"We can leave immediately, Jedi Skywalker," Dahn replied. "The battle is over. We've secured the planet."


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Luke sat next to an unconscious Leia in the medunit of the Freedom as a human and a droid medic examined her. He knew that her condition was dire; he just hoped there was something they could do. The human medic, a pretty young woman named Adria Pier, turned to Luke somberly.

"There's severe damage to her abdominal organs and significant calcification to blood vessels in the same area. We'll need to do open surgery to fix the damage, but we can't do that until the calcifications are resolved and blood flow restored. That will require a bacta tank," Adria paused. "We're just not sure if she's strong enough to handle the bacta we would need to use to restore the blood flow."

Leia stirred on the medical cot. "Put me in the tank," she whispered.

"Leia?" Luke leaned down to her, stroking her hair. Rieekan, limping in a nervoboot, walked around to the other side of the cot and took her hand.

"I said put me in the tank," Leia said again.

"If you're not strong enough right now—"

"Then I'll die regardless." A tear rolled down Leia's cheek as she thought about all the people who could be waiting for her on the other side. It would be so easy to let go of all the pain and join them. But she wouldn't. Not by choice. Not unless it was her destiny. "Luke, if you think I'm going to lose my will to live or something…I said I wouldn't dishonor Han's sacrifice. If I die, it's because my body couldn't overcome this. Han, and Bail, and Breha would never forgive me if I turned up in eternity because I lost my spirit – no matter how much I may want to."

She turned to the medics. "Put me in the tank. And then do the surgery. And if I don't make it, thank you for all your efforts."

The medics nodded and stepped away to prepare a bacta tank. Leia turned to Carlist.

"Carlist, you've been like a father to me since I lost Alderaan. I can never thank you enough. And I'm sorry you had to learn –"

Rieekan shook his head. "It changes nothing. You will always be the Princess of Alderaan to me. No matter what."

She nodded her thanks, then turned to Luke. Rieekan stepped away to give them a moment of privacy.

"Luke," she reached out and took his hand. "I saw Anakin. In the throne room. He came to me. He…it seems he faced a similar situation as I did today. It turned him. I forgave him, Luke. I don't know if it was the right thing to do...there is still no justice. But how could I not when I almost fell too...when the Dark Side almost had me believing that giving myself over was the greatest proof of my love?"

Luke nodded.

"Luke, if I don't make it, be strong. I love you. And I love that you're my brother, even if I've known it for such a brief time."

Luke kissed her forehead. "I love you too, Leia. But please try not to leave me alone here, okay?" He smiled weakly. "I don't want to be stuck with Threepio for the rest of my life."

She tried to laugh, but the movement racked her with pain, and she grimaced. Adria, seeing her discomfort, returned with a painkiller shot and an orderly droid to float her cot into the bactaroom. Just as they pushed it toward the door, Lando raced into the unit, out of breath.

"Lando," Leia spotted him. She struggled to move. "Tell me."

Luke nodded to Adria, hoping that she understood that now was the time to knock Leia out. The medic did seem to understand, and she approached Leia.

"If you knock me out before I hear what he has to say, I will withdraw my consent to the bacta."

In later years, in the few times Luke allowed himself to look back on the events of that day, he pinpointed the moment that Leia threatened to withdraw her consent to treatment as the moment he knew, deep down, that she would survive. But at this moment, all Luke could see was Leia inflicting more unnecessary pain on herself.

Lando looked cautiously at the medic, asking for tacit permission to speak to Leia. The medic shrugged. Her patient was critically ill, but not entirely compliant.

"It was Han…the Falcon destroyed the entire Outer Rim Fleet. I trailed the Falcon as far as I could along its last known trajectory, further than it could possibly get, but…nothing," Lando paused. "That maneuver's never been put into practice, but the theory says if it's done right -"

"—it's invariably fatal," Leia replied, softly.

Lando nodded. "Princess, he asked me to tell you something before…he told me that he wanted for you what was in your note. And he asked me to tell you that he would love you always."

Leia couldn't stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks and onto her pillow. That note. Han was supposed to survive this. The note was to tell _him_ to live on. This had never been his battle – but for her.

She nodded to the waiting medic, relieved that should she manage to remain conscious in the bacta tank, it was a place could cry where no one would see her tears.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Luke sat alone in Leia's medunit room, deep in a Jedi healing meditation focused not on himself, but on his sister. He felt her living presence waxing and waning throughout the surgery, which seemed to go on and on. He thought at one point he had lost her, as her presence disappeared from his senses for far too long. But then he felt her presence again and his own heart somehow found its way back into rhythm.

After seven hours that seemed like days, he felt the medic's arm on his shoulder.

"She's out of the processes," Adria said, handing Luke a caf.

"How is she?"

"She's alive," Kiy replied. "And after what she's been through in there, that's pretty amazing in and of itself. Too-Onebee will be along to tell you more."

Luke sat alone in the dark, trying not to imagine a galaxy without Han and Leia in it. He kept coming back to Leia's valor – her refusal, in the end, to be turned despite the sorely tempting offers of Han's resurrection. It was the maturity of Han and Leia's love for each other – the love that had changed his whole existence, the love that allowed her to honor his sacrifice instead of insisting that she possess him forever – that had made both of their actions possible today. He knew that somehow played into his thoughts about the future of the Jedi, but right now he could only think about the future of his sister.

His own pain at the loss of Han was also stronger than he would admit. Luke reached out with the Force to try to feel Han's presence in eternity. He got the answer he expected: none. Han was still a black hole in the Force, even when only his spirit lived on. Luke thought, with a sad chuckle, that was perhaps exactly how Han would prefer it.

Too-Onebee entered behind a floating op gurney on which Leia slept, sedated, a magnetic resonator arcing over her abdomen, its blue light beaming healing energy into the surgical area. Luke was relieved to see Too-Onebee again. Although he was a fairly old model, and newer droids on the market had six surgical arms compared to Too's two, the droid's age had allowed him to see every kind of injury know to the galaxy and to incorporate knowledge of how to treat it in his ever-expanding memory banks.

"Too-Onebee, tell me—"

"Her injuries were very severe, sir. We have reconstructed her abdominal organs, and the resonator will speed the healing process, but she was hit with was extremely powerful voltaic charge. We'll know more in a day, but right now, I'm afraid she's very weak."

Too-Onebee quietly left the room as Luke looked down at Leia. She looked so peaceful, he was almost glad she was unconscious for the moment.

"That's where you're wrong, Too-Onebee," Luke said to himself. "My sister is very strong."

He sat down next to her, took her hand, and resumed his healing meditation. He would stay for as long as it took.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

The first thing he noticed was that his head throbbed like he'd OD'd on a toxic batch of spice.

_Terrific_, Han Solo thought, _hell is an eternal hangover_.

Then he smelled the unmistakable stench of singed Wookiee fur, and he jerked upright in his captain's chair so quickly that it provoked a head throb of such ferociousness that he leaned over and vomited.

He reached up to the side of his face. There was blood caked on his left temple, and he could feel bruising reaching all the way down to his jaw.

He looked down at his clothes, sooty and pock-marked with burns. A flashburn had burned a hole in his vest and his shirt, and, from the feeling of it when he moved, his chest.

None of that began to compete with the pain he was starting to feel in his brain and in his heart, because…

He was alive.

He could hear Chewie banging away in the back of a darkened and, Han imagined, nearly-destroyed Falcon.

But "nearly" wasn't good enough. "Nearly" meant he'd failed. "Nearly" meant he was alive and Leia was dead.

He fell to his knees and retched again.

**Han** Chewie whined quietly, entering the cockpit.

"What did I do wrong?" Han mumbled.

**Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the Ennukian Hypothesis is wrong.**

Han looked blankly out the viewport at the vast starfield.

"Where are we?" he asked dully, not really caring much about the answer.

Chewie replied that he was not yet sure where they were, and he began to list the damage to the ship. The Falcon was nearly dead in space. The hyperdrive had been destroyed, nearly all controls were out, and they had no communications. Two of the sublight engines appeared to be working, but only at low capacity. He'd put out small fires in the bulkhead and the smuggling compartments when he came to consciousness, but many panels had been blown in from the force of the ion disruptors and shredded wires and cables hung everywhere, so another fire was possible at any second.

Han nodded, although Chewie was pretty confident Han wasn't even listening.

**I have hooked up an old tracer, which will track our last trajectory. I can then manually input the reverse trajectory and take us – slowly, if the ship holds together for that long – back to Coruscant.**

Han roused himself. "I can't go back there." He looked at Chewie, his eyes growing red. "I can't go back and see that place surrounded with Imperial forces and know that Leia is dead because I—"

**The chances we get there in one piece are almost nil, and, in any event, we're unable to land. So our only hope is an Imperial tractor beam, and that will allow us to go out with our blasters firing and take as many of them with us as we can.**

Han didn't reply.

**Han, I understand. Go to your cabin and lie down. I've already given you a shot for your concussion. I will handle this.**

Without another word, Han left the cockpit as Chewie plugged in the tracer and fiddled with it. If its readout was correct, their jump to hyperspace had taken them three standard days away from Coruscant at their present speed. That wasn't so bad, Chewie thought. Not that anything good could come of their arrival back at the planet.

XXXXXXXXXX

Han blundered back into his cabin, barely noticing that the Falcon's hold looked like that of an uninhabitable ghost ship. Flashburn marks scarred the few panels that weren't dented or blown clear off. A compressor unit had fallen and smashed the djarik table. Something vented acrid-smelling steam into the hold.

Han didn't care. Every dream he'd had worth dreaming was gone. Leia was dead. He couldn't get the vision of her lying dead on a superheated Coruscant walkway out of his mind. She was supposed to live on – he was supposed to die. He didn't even manage to do that right.

He'd failed.

And as he sat down on his bunk, he realized that the pillows still smelled of t'lil blossoms – Leia's favorite perfume.

For the first time in his adult life, Han Solo lay on his bed and wept.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Leia woke, staring up at a white ceiling that was reflecting a ghostly blue light. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was or what was happening. She almost called out to see if Han were nearby. Then she saw the magnetic resonator encircling her abdomen, and everything came flooding back. She tried desperately to put all the anguish aside, to do what she'd been doing for years, but this time the pain simply refused to go away. It had finally taken up residence in the very core of her being and demanded to be felt and expressed. She wanted to let the long-restrained torrents of tears come, but she sensed Luke in the room and pushed them back.

She tried to move and groaned softly, waking Luke and bringing a medic to her side with a painkilling med. She accepted it appreciatively and nodded as the medic told her that the pain should dissipate enough for her to be released by tomorrow, since now that she was awake, the resonator could be incased to full power and she would soon be healed.

_ If she only knew…_thought Leia.

Luke took her hand and smiled. His relief was palpable. So was his suppressed grief.

"I guess you're stuck with me," Leia said.

"And I'm very glad about it."

"How long has it been?"

Luke looked up at a chrono. "About thirty-siz hours."

"Essag almost had me, Luke," Leia said softly.

"But he didn't succeed. Your love for Han, and his love for you, are too strong and too honest—"

She squeezed Luke's hand. "Please, stop. I can't. Not now. I can't talk about Han. A small part of me will always regret not doing what Essag asked of me, just for the chance to hold him again."

Luke shook his head, pulled up a chair next to Leia's cot and began to explain what he'd learned. He'd spoken to Rieekan and the medic, Adria, in the hours Leia remained in induced sedation, and, with their input, Luke had become convinced that Essag did not have the power he claimed. Adria had noted that the damage done to Leia's abdomen was exactly the type of widespread damage a misplaced ventricular charge would cause. So, yes, Essag could "resurrect" the dead, if you could call it that, but that was science as much as the Force. He used his skill in the Force to overwhelm the electrical system of the heart with a severe voltaic charge, nominally killing someone, and then, if he chose to, he could use another charge to bring them back, as you would with a typical ventricular charger.

When Rieekan described the terrifying sensation of an eternal evil spirit he'd had after his "death," Luke was certain that the vision he described had been implanted in his mind as he came back to life. There was no way Rieekan was headed for a dark eternity.

"It was a Sith sabaac trick, Leia," Luke continued. "He would have turned you to the Dark Side and given you nothing in return after you'd bowed to him. He would string you along, making demands of his apprentice and forcing you to carry out unforgivable deeds in the name of the Sith, damning you further to the Dark Side. And when you were so far gone that there was no possibility of return, he'd tell you the truth."

Leia nodded and thought of Anakin, of unforgiveable deeds carried out in the name of the Sith.

"Luke, there will always be the Dark, won't there? No matter what you do, there will always be Force-sensitive people who—"

"Fall? Yes. I expect so. And I expect it's more likely the less mature you are. Which is why I don't believe the Jedi were right in training children so young. Children trained to be stronger in the Force while still immature – probably not a good combination. Especially for a Jedi whose training was as brief as mine. I'm no Master, and I'm not sure I ever will be."

"As soon as I am well enough, I want you to start training me, Luke. I can't look to you to protect me from the Dark Side, from the Sith, from Force-sensitives looking to make a big kill for the rest of my life. Train me so that I can protect myself and others, and so that people like Essag can't use my pain against me."

Luke nodded. "I will, Leia."

"And I will live by the Old Ways," she added.

Luke wanted to tell her to slow down on that promise, but he looked up to see Mon Mothma and Carlist Rieekan entering the medunit. Luke could feel Leia tense up; this was the last thing she needed. He could also sense that Mon felt awful, almost shamed. She walked to Leia's side.

"I heard you'd awakened, Leia. I wanted to come and see how you are," Mon said with her usual reserve.

"I'll physically recover," Leia answered, daring Mon to make a wrong move.

"I'm very sorry for your loss," Mon continued, ignoring Leia's jab.

"Are you?" Leia asked, the weakness of her voice belying the intensity of her feelings. "Or has some second-rate noble from a backwater planet with valuable mineral deposits already inquired about my sudden and unexpected availability and told you that he's willing to overlook certain unsavory assignations in my past?"

Luke winced. He didn't think Leia intended to be that harsh. But he didn't really know what had passed between the two women.

"Leia, please," Mon took her hand. "I'm not entirely without a heart. And I was wrong. I admit it. I was wrong about Han."

Leia relented at Mon's words. Yes, she had been wrong. But Leia knew she had played a damaging role in forming Mon's first impression of Han.

"So was I," Leia whispered. "I hurt him and demeaned him. I allowed you to think for far too long that my reports on him were true, not colored by my futile attempts to deny my own feelings. He deserved so much better from me. "

"I'm sorry, Leia. So very sorry."

"Me too." Leia went silent, willing herself not to break down in front of Mon. There were things she had to tell Mon, many things, but since she knew Rieekan would never tell her secrets, she didn't feel herself capable of sharing them with Mon right now.

"I'll let you rest," Mon said. She hesitated, unwilling to reveal too much of the pain which she had borne over the years, of the hole left in her heart by the husband and son lost to the Empire and the cold, patrician shell she sometimes felt that experience left behind. But maybe she could help Leia. "I know you don't believe it now, but you will find ways to smile again. You will smile less, and you will always feel as if a piece of your soul is out there, just beyond your reach, but you will be able to find joy in life again someday."

Leia felt her former mentor's pain. Mon never spoke of it. Her distant demeanor made it easy to overlook just how much Mon had suffered. Leia watched as Mon, looking somehow older than she had just a few moments ago, turned away.

"Mon," she called out. "Mon, I need to ask you: did my father ever speak to you about my biological parents – or my future?"

Mon paused, surprised that Leia would raise that question right now. It seemed pointless, after all that had transpired over the years. And it seemed unimaginable that Leia didn't know the answers. But there was an encrypted holodisk hidden away in a locked room in Mon's safe location. Bail Organa had given it to her, making her promise to give it to Leia should she survive the war and he, and Breha, didn't. It likely contained all the answers Leia sought, but she wouldn't give it to her when she was in such a precarious position. The last thing she needed to see were holos of her deceased parents explaining why the life she had been raised to live would never be hers.

"No, Leia. We didn't. I'm sorry. Why?"

Leia shook her head. She would tell Mon, and she would tell her soon, but she couldn't tell her today. "Mon, please. Keep the 'noble scavengers' away. I may be ruined in the eyes of many noble families, but others—" she shivered at the thought that even being Darth Vader's child wouldn't scare all of them away; some would find that to be an advantage.

"Leia…" said Mon. She understood what Leia feared so entirely. Leia had always struggled with the idea of an arranged marriage. Now, an arranged marriage would have great benefit to a nascent government. "Your parents may have had the right to arrange your future, but I do not. I am neither Alderaani nor as cold as I may seem. I fought for freedom. And that includes your right to choose the course of your future."

Mon's comlink beeped. She took Leia's hand.

"I will check on you again, Leia," she said, then she exited the medunit, Rieekan close behind her.

"Was Leia right about the noble scavengers?"

Mon grimaced, incensed. "Yes. Mostly from the disgraceful Alderaani politicos on Coruscant, who clearly spent their free time while sitting out the war engaging in fantasies of how they could sell Leia into marriage in return for getting their hooks into a new planet with the power and prestige of Alderaan. If Han Solo can hear me from eternity, I'm sure he will find this ironic and infuriating, but right now I would give anything to be able to marry him to the Princess immediately."

She stalked away down the hall. Coruscant had been free for three days. Parts of it were still a smoking ruin. And the political games had already begun.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

It had been forty-eight hours since Han left the cockpit, and he still hadn't returned to his beloved pilot's seat. During that time, Chewie did what he could to shore up the Falcon, so if one of the Star Destroyers likely still circling Coruscant chose to pick them up in their tractor beam instead of blowing them out of the sky, the Falcon might actually hold together long enough for them to go out with all guns blazing.

Chewie hoped his efforts weren't futile. It amazed him that the ship remained spaceworthy. When Chewie went below to check on the guts of the ship, he had howled in despair. The fuel tanks, which seemed solid yesterday, had started leaking. The Falcon was now a wreck limping toward Coruscant on auxiliary power.

Much like its captain. Chewie had kept an eye on Han, despite Han's profane insistence that Chewie leave him alone. He hadn't left his cabin for eighteen hours after they woke up alive, and he only agreed to that because Chewie insisted if Han didn't do something to that wretched flashburn that had shredded the skin on his left side, Chewie would do it for him.

Han's utter desolation frightened. He'd obviously been drinking; the bottle of Corellian brandy that Han had been saving for years was empty, but the lost look on his face worried Chewie much more. This drawn Han Solo who now wandered the Falcon like a ghost reminded Chewie of an old Shyriiwook word that translated to Basic as "one who lost his soul."

He heard Han start rummaging in the galley again, but nearly no food, and only a few bottles of Aldera wine that he'd prefer Han not find, remained on the ship. A glass broke, followed by a bottle smashing against the galley wall. Chewie ached for his friend, but he knew there was nothing he could do or say right now. He just needed to keep Han together enough to end this right.

Chewie was looking for a box of inactive thermal detonators he and the Princess had acquired, and wondering if activating them all at once in an Executor docking bay would blow the dreadnaught to the spice mines of Kessel, when he found an old comm receiver that had to be almost a century old. Those things used almost no juice. If he could just find a few working connections in the cockpit…

Chewie decided it was worth a try. He walked through the hold, gingerly picking his way through the damage, and spotted Han in the galley sitting dejectedly at the small table, an ancient datacalc in front of him.

"I know why I failed."

Chewie wanted to tell his friend that all this talk of failure was wrong, that he had attempted something more valiant than a thousand men would even consider trying, but he knew it would fall on deaf ears. So he just listened.

"I used the standard span and mass in the nav computer." Han looked at Chewie, his eyes bloodshot and red. "The sensor array…we're missing the sensor array. So I was off by six meters in span and a ton in mass. It was my fault….I didn't get my damn numbers right."

**That small an error-** Chewie growled.

"—would have put us two meters under the apex of the disruptor. That's not absolute precision."

Chewie had no answer so, as usual, he defaulted to humor. **I really think we need to begin to consider Lando a net negative in our lives.**

Han didn't respond, instead fading back into a morose silence, so Chewie returned to the cockpit with the old comm receiver. He stripped a few wires from the damaged instrument panel and began improvising. After a few minutes of tinkering, Chewie convinced the old receiver to come to life. He twisted the knobs, finding an automated shipping code that was of no use to him. He continued to twist knobs, listening to and then discarding each transmission until he came across a familiar code coming from an unexpected source.

Chewie roared for Han. No response. He tried again.

**Solo get your pasty human ass in here. I have found something you need to hear.**

Han dragged himself to the door of the cockpit. "What's so kreffin' important?"

**Listen.**

Han listened for a second. "That's an Alliance code. What's the time-stamp?"

**Three hours ago**

"Where's it coming from?"

**The coordinates put it on Coruscant, somewhere in the Consular District.**

"That's impossible. Even automated transmissions would have cycled out by now."

**It's not automated.** Chewie showed Han the receiver. **It's been manually input.**

"That couldn't be. Unless—"

**Unless we did not fail, Han.**

Suddenly, Han Solo was a changed man. "I'll be right back."

Han stumbled his way through the mess in the hold and grabbed the medkit in the galley. There had to be something in there to coax him into alertness. He found a stimpack and jabbed himself with a hypodermic. It quickly started to take effect.

He hurried back into the cockpit, taking his seat in the pilot's chair and shaking off the remaining cobwebs. Leia could still be alive. It was only a chance, he knew. Anything could have happened in the battle. But that chance was all he needed to feel the vague stirrings of hope.

**You look like hell, Solo.**

"And you stink like a dead bantha. How far out are we, Chewie?"

**Fifteen hours.**


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Leia moved slowly, struggling to put on the simple light blue gown someone had found for her to wear after everything left that she owned had been destroyed along with Home One. Thankfully, it wasn't pain that was making her move so slowly anymore; the magnetic resonator had done wonders in a very short time, but the pain had been replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that made it difficult to get out of the bed in the medunit. She didn't look forward to seeing people today.

The door slid open and Luke walked in.

"Hey, I heard you're getting released!" He stopped as he saw her in formal attire. "Why are you dressed like that?"

"Mon is holding a memorial ceremony at the Chandrilan Consulate for all who lost their lives at the hands of the Empire. It's going to be sent out over the holonet – the first thing the Alliance is sending out over the holonet now that we control it. I should be there." She looked down and smoothed her dress.

"You don't have to be there."

"Yes, I do," she said quietly.

Luke frowned, trying to come up with a way to talk Leia out of causing herself more grief.

"Please don't argue with me, Luke. Just, if you could, bring me down to the planet."

Reluctantly, Luke agreed.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Coruscant loomed large in the Falcon's viewport. They were only two hours out, and Chewie had coaxed the tempgauge into revealing that the surface temperature on Coruscant was normal.

"There are no Imps out here either, Chewie," Han said.

**No checkpoints either. **

Han had just jabbed himself with a third stimshot and, Chewie noticed, he'd also found a way to shower and change. _Naturally, the shower still worked_, Chewie thought,_ and not the reverse thrusters or the engines_. Chewie hoped that Solo hadn't gotten his hopes up too high. They were still in a very bad situation, and there were no guarantees that Leia had survived the battle.

He growled to Han, reminding him that the big problem they'd grappled with for twelve hours was still unsolved. They had minimal instrument control, one rear thruster now, and still no comm. No way of being sure that they could counteract gravitational acceleration either, as two of the three antigrav backthrusts were out.

**Any new ideas? Long flight to end up dead.**

Han shook his head. He had an idea, but he wasn't ready to share it just yet. Because it was kind of crazy.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Luke left Leia at the Chandrilan Consulate, as she'd requested she go to this service alone. She walked through the crowd of Rebellion officers and allies, each of whom wanted to offer her words of congratulations or consolation. She said little, only nodding her thanks and wishing the ceremony would start out on the Consulate balcony so she could escape this horrible planet, which continued to assault her senses, and return to the small cabin they had found for her on the Freedom.

She felt she didn't belong among these people anymore. She wasn't quite sure she belonged anywhere. Four years ago, she had been Crown Princess and Senator Leia Organa of Alderaan. Everything she had believed to be true then and every bit of her former identity had been stripped away over the course of this war. Her relationship with Han had allowed her to find a different part of herself, a completely unguarded identity as just "Leia" that she shared only with him, but now that identity was gone too. She stood among her equals, her subjects, and her comrades feeling as naked and vulnerable as she had in Jabba's palace.

XXXXXXXXXX

Han decided to tell Chewie the part of the plan he needed to know. Assuming they had too little power to raise concerns that a hostile ship was incoming, and that they wouldn't get picked up as anything other than space junk on Coruscant radar, they would drop into an extremely low orbit – as in skimming-the-tops-of-the-buildings low – and cruise for as long as possible, hoping that the command staff at one of the landing platforms recognized the Falcon as an Alliance ship in trouble. Maybe, just maybe, some of those platforms were equipped with tractor beams. Han doubted it, despite the Imperial love of tractor beams.

If they weren't recognized as a friendly in trouble, they'd just have to take their chances. There were a few man-made greenspaces on Coruscant, and if they were really lucky, maybe they could skid to a halt there.

As far as gravitational acceleration and the antigrav backthrusts, well, there was nothing they could do, so they were just going to have to hope.

That was what he told Chewie anyway. The real plan – the one he was keeping to himself because it sounded too crazy to put into words – was to do what Luke said Han couldn't do: drop his defense mechanisms, allow Luke to sense his presence and bring them down safely. That was probably even less likely than losing power right over a greenspace.

"Okay, Chewie, here we go," Han said as the Falcon hit the exosphere. "Come on, baby," he murmured to his ship.

They felt the remaining antigrav backthrust kick in.

"Atta girl," Han praised the ship as it maintained its speed in descent despite the increasing pull of gravity.

He sat back in his seat, since there was little more he could do until he hit the lower atmosphere, and concentrated on lowering his well-honed defenses. He thought of the only thing that left him completely defenseless: Leia. And he tried to believe that Luke Skywalker was down there and could sense his presence if only Han could let him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Luke sat outside the Imperial Palace, meditating on the five pillars that had first adorned the Jedi Temple. Those things Essag had said that he believed to be true – about Ben attacking Vader and leaving him to die, about Vader's ability to get into the Jedi Temple and massacre the children without the Jedi attempting to stop him – made Luke deeply suspicious that the Jedi Order had perhaps become too corrupted to attempt to resurrect it. He'd shared that concern with Leia on their trip down to the planet, and although she had nodded in acknowledgement, he knew her mind was light years away. He would train her, but his thoughts about resurrecting the Jedi Order were still very jumbled.

Luke startled as he sensed a familiar presence. But as soon as he felt it, the presence was gone. He closed his eyes, trying to find that presence again. It was not Leia, her pain was an ever-present pulse in his mind. This was a new presence. Once again, for a moment, he could almost reach out and grasp it, then it disappeared. He gave the presence time, and finally, it reappeared and settled into a constant, living presence in his senses. Luke felt its familiarity, but he couldn't quite place it. The presence was male. He felt its uncertainty, some physical pain, and a small, flickering hope in it. Luke pressed on and sensed courage, stubbornness, and a jumble of fears. The presence was in mortal danger but more about what he'd discover if he survived the danger. He felt love –for a woman and, as Luke stretched out to the brink of his own abilities, he felt that the presence loved him as if he were a brother.

Han.

Han Solo was alive, he was nearby, and he was in danger.

Luke looked up to the sky. He couldn't see the Falcon, but Luke felt certain that Han Solo was up there somewhere, trying to bring a damaged Falcon home.

Luke jumped in his skyspeeder and raced toward the Palace Landing Platforms.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

She couldn't stand the solicitous dignitaries for one more instant.

Leia had maintained her composure throughout the ceremony as Mon led the Alliance to Restore the Republic in remembrance of all those the Empire had killed and all those who had died fighting it so far. When Mon listed the names of the officers who had died in the Battle of Coruscant, making special mention of Admiral Gial Ackbar and then stopping to recognize the extraordinary valor of General Han Solo, Leia felt every eye on her. She remained calm only by imagining how much Han would despise being called out like that. He loved it when Leia or his friends made a big deal about him, but when anyone outside his small circle of friends threatened to make a big deal about him, he'd say "if a smuggler is famous, he's doing it wrong."

Now that the ceremony had ended, Leia felt an almost panicked need to flee. She felt her composure cracking as she ignored the dignitaries and hurried out to a passing skycab. Amazing how quickly commerce had resumed. She programmed the skycab to take her to the old Alderaanian Consulate, unsure of exactly what she'd do when she got there.

After a brief ride, she jumped out of the cab at the barricaded entrance. Although all the gates had been locktripped, she spotted one gate that vandals and thieves had likely used to carry off whatever valuables they could find. She wasn't interested in the valuables, only in the silence of the small Alderaanian temple built deep in the heart of the Consulate. She slipped between the gates and hurried in, ignoring all the rooms she used to use for meetings, negotiations, and, when circumstances called for it, clandestine planning sessions with Rebel leaders.

She pulled open the doors to the temple, hurried up the aisle toward the peaceful altar backed by a giant crystal window in hues of blue, pink, and palest yellow, sunk down on the steps of the altar, and began to sob deep, racking sobs that shook her small body. After years of bearing up, Leia Organa could be strong no more. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Lando sat at the holodeck in the Palace Landing Platform control room, reviewing the last moments of the Falcon over and over. Something didn't smell right – that Executor's ion beam disappeared and then reappeared a moment later after reorienting slightly. It didn't make a lot of sense, but he could only conclude that Han's calculations left him slightly off-course and fast for the maneuver – Lando guiltily thought he knew why that might be – but also that, against all probabilities, someone on that dreadnaught had sussed out Han's plan and helped him carry it out, saving billions on Coruscant in the process.

But it still looked as if the maneuver hadn't come off perfectly. The Falcon didn't fly into the disruptor head on, as the beam hadn't reignited until the Falcon was halfway past it. Only the aft half of the Falcon took the brunt of the disruptor's power, which meant that either the Ennukian Hypothesis needed to be rewritten or there was still the sliver of a chance Han was out there alive somewhere, as the Falcon would have been pushed badly off-course by the disruptor hitting it midway through its jump to lightspeed.

Lando had been looking in the wrong place. He didn't quite know where to look, but he was inclined to go up again to search. Lucky Rieekan had talked Madine out of court-martialing him, and luckier that Rieekan was on duty in the control room right now.

"General Rieekan," a rebel tech turned to the General. "We have something odd on our scopes."

Rieekan frowned. Who knew what was out there trying to get into the Coruscant system right now. "Report."

"It's not a ship. Its power is too low for that, but it is somehow powered. Coming into the ionosphere now." He pointed at a blip on his scopes. "Coming in fast."

"Abandoned mining asteroid?" Rieekan quizzed.

"No," Luke said as he raced into the command center. "The Millennium Falcon."

Rieekan whirled around to Luke.

"He's in trouble; the Falcon must be badly damaged. I don't think it's landable."

Rieekan didn't waste time questioning Luke. If there was the slightest chance that the Jedi was right—

"Send up two X-Wings to find that object. If it's a ship, and it has no control, they need to clear a path so no other traffic hits it—"

"Too late," said Lando, pointing up at a dark speck in the sky, trailing a cloud of billowing black smoke.

Luke rushed out onto the tarmac. He remembered his failure to raise his X-Wing on Dagobah and acknowledged that the Falcon was more than ten times heavier.

_That time I tried. This time I do._

Luke closed his eyes and raised his arm, locking his mental focus on the ship traveling screamingly fast towards him. He immediately felt the brunt of the ship's weight and speed. He also felt Han reach out reflexively for the unusable controls as the ship suddenly came under the influence of some outside power.

_Trust me, you moon-jockey_, Luke ordered. He didn't think Han could sense him, but he did feel him release the controls.

Luke's arms began to shake as the weight of the ship fought back against him. He let the Force flow through him, concentrating only on the Falcon and the Force, impervious to any distractions. The Falcon slowed and descended.

"There's only so much even a Jedi can do," Rieekan whispered, as even with its decreased speed, the Falcon was coming in too fast.

The ship tilted wildly to starboard as its last rear backthrust went out. Luke cried out in pain, as the additional forward power of the ship nearly threw him to the ground. He didn't break concentration, although his arms and legs shook like they could collapse at any moment. Sweat streamed down his face as he pulled the Falcon toward the platform.

"Too fast, too fast—" Lando muttered.

With a cry of pain as he reached the end of his strength, Luke slowed the Falcon and guided its ruined bulk to the platform. The Falcon dropped hard to the ground as Luke fell to the tarmac. He had done it.

Inside the Falcon, Chewie and Han sat silent and numb for a moment, surprised to be alive. Han faltered, knowing that he'd now have his greatest fear or deepest desire confirmed.

"Thanks, girl," Han whispered to the ship as he gathered his courage and hurried out of the cockpit, manually pushing the gangway down with a crash. He raced off the ship and across the tarmac as fast as he could run with his burned side screaming at him with every step.

He made it to Luke, who was tentatively attempting to stand, and enveloped him in a hug. "Luke," Han gasped, alternating between profound gratitude and profound fear. "Leia-"

Luke nodded. "She's here, on Coruscant. She was injured—"

Han's stomach dropped.

"She's okay." Luke focused on his sister and immediately sensed such visceral agony it brought tears to his eyes.

"She's in so much pain, so much grief," Luke said.

"Where? Where is she?"

Luke shook his head. He didn't recognize the place. "I see an altar. There's a crystal window – blue, pink—"

"The Alderaanian Consulate," Rieekan remembered it well. "Han, come with me, I'll get you there. General Calrissian, you have command of the platform. Take care of Luke. And please don't give us another reason to want to court-martial you."

Lando saluted, a giant smile on his face. His only reason to go AWOL had just returned.

XXXXXXXXXX

At one point on the trip to Bespin, when Han had quizzed Leia as to why, with all the horrible things that had happened to her, the only time he'd ever seen her cry was when she awoke from a nightmare, she'd told him that it was because she was afraid if she started crying, she would never stop. She was starting to believe that was literally true. Every time she thought she had the tears under control, something would cause a fresh round. First it had been the formal portrait of Bail and Breha next to the altar. Mostly it had been random memories - the night Han took her dancing, a spur-of-the-moment snowball fight on Hoth, and, most agonizing, the way she could almost see the little boy that Han had been as she'd watched him sleep just a few nights ago – that provoked inconsolable tears.

Han hurried to the Consulate entrance. Rieekan had responded to Han's question about what he needed to know with only the barest factual information about her injuries and about the fact that she had been the one to kill Essag. Han could tell Rieekan hadn't nearly told him everything. He didn't need to know everything right now. He just needed Leia back in his arms.

He ran from room to room, trying to find the temple. Finally, toward the back of the Consulate, he spotted it and pushed open its doors. The room was dusty from the battle and years of disuse. The sun glinted through the magnificent crystal window, sending shining prisms of color throughout the room. He saw Leia's small figure prostrate on the altar steps, shaking with grief.

He didn't dare call out and frighten her. He wasn't sure that in her state she could handle hearing the voice of a man she believed to be dead. He quickly walked to the altar, thinking that he'd never seen her this fragile. Fragile – that was a word he never thought he'd associate with Leia.

Leia sense the warm presence behind her. It didn't feel like Luke, but she was in no condition to sense anything beyond its concern and love for her. And the only person left in the galaxy who felt that for her was Luke.

"Luke?" she said tremulously. "Luke, do you think he really knew – after everything – I need to believe that he died knowing that I love him more completely than he could even imagine."

Han slowly knelt down next to the Princess, his eyes growing misty. He reached out to touch her shoulder.

"How many times am I going to have to tell you I know?" he said softly.

She turned to him, momentarily unable to comprehend what she saw, disbelieving that Han was truly beside her. For a moment, Han worried that she might pass out. And then they were wrapped in each other's arms, Leia sobbing against Han's chest as he buried his head in her hair, kissing her and pulling her as close as he possibly could.

"I thought I'd lost you—"

"I thought I'd failed—"

They spoke over each other, words that needed no response as they held each other. When, after a few minutes, she lifted her tear-stained face to look at him, Leia, still deeply shaken, ran her finger down his bruised and cut cheek. He gently kissed her – her lips, her eyelids, her nose – that precious face he thought he'd never see again.

She finally managed to form a coherent thought and looked quizzically at him.

"How-?"

Han shook his head. "It's a very long story that starts with a missing sensor array and an aerodynamic hypothesis that needs to be rewritten." He saw Luke entering the temple, still weak from his exertion, supported by Chewie and Lando. "And it ends with me having to believe the Force is real, because your brother brought down a forty-ton ship that couldn't land and saved our lives."

Leia looked to Luke and, through her tears, whispered "thank you," before turning back to Han, still amazed that she looked into those hazel eyes again. He cupped her face in his hands. They'd been pulled apart too many times; this time, it had almost meant forever. He didn't want to waste another second.

"Leia," he said," I don't want the sun to set again before we're together for good. Marry me today."

"Yes. Yes," Leia replied, "I want that too."

"—even if I have to steal Darth Mothma's ship and fly us to Corellia to make it happen," Han concluded, just as Mon Mothma entered the temple with Rieekan.

"I don't think theft will be necessary, General Solo."

Leia, recognizing the dry humor she hadn't heard from Mon in a very long time, laughed, resting her head against Han's chest as he rolled his eyes, thinking that he would never, ever manage to get it right where Mon Mothma was concerned. For her part, though, Mon had never been as ecstatic to see Han Solo as she was right now.

"At least not when I'm perfectly willing to perform the ceremony myself, we're in a temple, and we seem to have more than enough witnesses."

Han's mouth fell open. The woman who gave every indication of despising him had just offered to perform their marriage. Then again, another woman who once gave every indication of despising him was about to become his wife. Crazy galaxy.

"That would be perfect, except—"Leia looked apologetically at Han, "not here. I don't want our marriage to start on Coruscant." She couldn't imagine an event as happy as her marriage to Han happening in a place that still felt so dark. She could explain it to Han later.

She looked to Luke, who nodded his agreement. He still felt it too.

"On the Freedom, then?" Mon asked

"Yes," Leia said. "On theFreedom."

Mon nodded and exited, with a small smile to Leia. Han watched her depart.

"Not the warmest woman," he observed. "But I'll take it."

"Me too," said Leia, losing herself in the comfort of his arms again.


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Leia and Han lay facing each other on the small bunk in the quarters Leia had been assigned on the Freedom after the destruction of Home One. Despite their happiness at theimmediately impending nuptials, it had been a difficult afternoon for them both, starting with Leia's first look at the Falcon as they boarded a shuttle back to the fleet.

She felt her legs give way when she saw the ship. It truly had been a miracle that Han and Chewie made it back. Laser and ion burns scarred the aft half of the ship; heat panels were missing everywhere, and the whole ship somehow looked at if its durasteel frame had buckled.

"Oh Gods…"she whispered. "We'll get it fixed. The Alliance will repair it – it was damaged in our fight. I promise you, Han, even if we have to replace every piece of durasteel, you will fly the Falcon again."

She'd expected Han to look as sick as she felt about the destruction of his ship, but that wasn't what she saw when she looked in his eyes. She saw acceptance.

He shrugged. "If she can be repaired, that'd be great. If not…she brought me back to you. If that's the last thing she ever does, I'm okay with that."

After they arrived at her quarters, Leia had insisted on checking the injury she knew Han was trying to hide. The flashburn was bad, very bad, despite Chewie's ministrations. She'd nearly insisted Han go to the medunit and get himself put into a bacta tank. He looked up at her a little shame-facedly.

"Leia, after the carbonite, there's no way I'm going to be able to let them lower me conscious into a bacta tank without me goin' half crazy from fear and flashbacks," he mumbled quietly.

He'd never told her truly how much that experience still impacted him. She knew he'd joined her in having horrible nightmares, but this was new information, so she silently kissed his forehead, found that she still had one large bactapad remaining in her ops bag, and wrapped it around his chest. Only then did she extricate from him a promise that if the wound wasn't substantially better by morning, they'd go to the medunit and she'd demand they use a bactatub instead of a bacta tank, no matter how much the medics balked at the increased expense.

Then they lay down with their arms around each other, and they told each other about what had happened in the battle. Leia wept bitterly as she related having to leave the little boy on the war-ravaged street, about Jax Cantos dying in her arms, and, worst of all, about Essag's attempts to use Han's presumed death and promises of his resurrection to turn her to the Dark Side, and how he'd almost succeeded.

"You know you were right, though, Leia, don't you?" Han said. "Even if I were dead, and even if he could do what he said, you were right."

"Part of me just worried that I was throwing away your chance to live to prove myself good."

"No." Han had said, his voice turning harsh. "That's exactly what that bastard wanted you to feel. Leia, It wouldn't be easy, but I could figure out a way to live with it, eventually, if you died to save me. I could have figured out a way to keep living someday if I'd come back here and found that you died in the battle. What I'd never, ever be able to live with is if you lost what makes you the woman you are so I could live on. Never, Leia. It would have killed me a second time for sure."

She nodded, still miserable at the dark memories that were flooding back into her conscious mind after so many years of repression.

"Let it out, Leia," he whispered at she wept in his arms. "Let it all out. You've had to be far too strong for far too long."

She cried for longer than she thought possible as Han's arms encircled her, providing her a safe place to give herself over to the pain. Finally, she felt as if she were cried out.

"I'm afraid you're marrying a woman who's broken, Han."

"We've fought in a war. We're all a little bit broken. And the worst of that war fell on you."

"When I thought I'd lost you," she said, "it was like all the wounds that I'd stitched up so quickly tore wide open. I'm not sure how to close them again."

"You never gave them time to heal."

"There never WAS time," she said, dully.

"I'm not criticizing. The war ain't over, but we're not going to have to be on the front lines of every battle any more. There's gonna be a government now, and a lot more people to fight. You're right; there never was time before, but maybe now there is."

"Yes, now there may be time, and I don't know if I can face it all."

Han chuckled softly. "I know you better than you know yourself, Princess. It's gonna hurt like hell, but you can face it. And for as long as I live, you won't have to face any of it alone. Not ever."

A fresh round of tears sprang to her eyes and threatened to spill over. "Dammit," she laughed, starting to be embarrassed by herself.

"It's okay," Han pulled her closer to him, careful not to put any pressure on her surgical site. "I got your back, Princess. Always."

She lay silently against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. He was willing to stay right there forever, but after a few minutes, he forced himself to look at his chrono.

"We should get ready or we're going to miss our own wedding."

Leia nodded, but she didn't move. "Han, there's one more thing. I need to know what you think about something." She bit her lip as she heard his heart speed up a tick. "I asked Luke to train me in the ways of the Force…you hate that, don't you?"

"I hate it a lot more if you're planning on being celibate like they were—well, like I thought they were supposed to be," he smiled, but his eyes were troubled as he stood up slowly.

She picked up a pillow and smacked him with it. "Actually…I did tell Luke I'd follow the Old Ways. I better make it clear that I was lying about that."

"Yeah," Han said, raising an eyebrow jokingly. "You better. Or I will."

She smiled, but returned to the serious subject at hand. "I don't need to be a Jedi, but after everything, I don't think I can go on totally untrained. I don't think it's safe. For me or for you."

Han nodded.

"You agree?" she said, surprised.

They really were going to be late if they didn't get moving. But even more, he didn't want her to read all the conflicting emotions on his face. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, looking away from her.

"Leia, I don't know that I should have a vote here. I just decided this Force thing was completely real today," he said, but she saw that his shoulders were slumped.

She stood up and walked around the bed, putting her arms round his neck. "Hey…of course you get a vote. You're going to be my husband in under an hour. This isn't only about me anymore. It's about us both."

Han looked down and shook his head.

"You really, really hate this idea, don't you?"

"I hate every single fiber of the idea," Han admitted. "But not for the reasons you think. I hate that we live in a galaxy where you're gonna have to spend too much of your life keepin' your eyes open for danger, and that I'm not always gonna be able to protect you. But when I think about what Luke did today…" he shook his head, still trying to believe what Luke had done, "if a bad guy has powers like that, I'm not gonna be much use in the end. I'm gonna get beat every time, like I was by Vader on Bespin. So yeah, I hate it, because I can't be your protector when you come face-to-face with those guys. But I also want Luke to teach you everything he possibly can so you stay safe. If that means my wife turns out to be the first married Jedi in the history of the galaxy…so be it."

Leia nodded. "Okay."

"Promise me one thing, though," Han continued. "The Jedi – I don't know a whole lot about them, but I do know that they seemed to spend a lot of time lookin' for trouble. I feel like trouble's done a good enough job of findin' us without us going lookin' for it. I'm tired of it, Leia. So promise me that you won't go lookin'."

Leia smiled. "I promise, Han."

"Then I guess we should go do this thing, Your Highnessness," Han smiled.

"Nothing in the galaxy would make me happier, flyboy."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Twenty minutes later, Han and Leia arrived at the door of the small meditation room on the _Freedom_to see their friends and colleagues – Luke, Chewie, Lando, Rieekan, Madine, Adria Pier, Wedge Antilles and various others – waiting for them. Han had changed into a formal Alliance uniform borrowed, sans the cape, from Lando, because he figured that in the near future Leia might get a lot of flak for marrying him. The uniform would quietly remind everyone inclined to give her a hard time that she'd married a general and Alliance war hero, not the petty criminal he used to be. Besides, all of his own clothes were back on the Falcon, reeking of smoke and compressor fluid.

He hoped he looked the figure of respectability, although he was starting to get a little concerned that the last stimshot might wear off before he got through his vows. He didn't relish the idea of falling into a uniformed, snoring lump on the floor at his own wedding, but Leia had made a convincing argument that a fourth stimshot in two days could make his heart literally explode at their wedding, when all she could handle was the figurative.

Despite the circles under Leia's eyes, and the fact that that they both knew she was injured and weary, Han thought she looked, as always, beautiful. She had let her hair down; it fell in cascading waves to her waist, and it was all Han could do not to run his hands through it. She wore a white dress that she'd found hidden in a closet before they'd left the Alderaanian Consulate. It reminded Han of the gown she'd worn at the medals ceremony after he and Luke blew up the Death Star. It also hung a bit too loosely on her tiny frame, but a few weeks of Han's cooking should solve that problem.

"I still don't have a ring," Han realized.

"And I'm still not in this for jewelry," Leia replied with a smile.

Han looked around the room. Their friends had tried to beautify it, turning off the overhead luminators in favor of many flickering candles. Combined with the large viewport looking out at the stars behind the altar, the utilitarian little room was somewhat transformed. Still…

"This isn't what you deserve," Han said. "You should have flowers and a gown and a cathedral—"

Leia tightened her grip on his hand. "The only thing I want and need at my wedding his standing next to me right now."

"But…"

"Then in ten years, we can do this again, with flowers and a gown and a minister and an alpine meadow filled with flowers. Because in ten years, I will love you just as much as I do today, and even more," she said.

He kissed her hand. "So will I. And I want you to hold me to that meadow."

They saw Mon Mothma entering. Han exhaled with relief; he'd been a little concerned that Mon had changed his mind about him, but she took her place on the small altar and nodded to them. Their moment had come.

"Besides," Leia said as they started to walk down the aisle, "Maybe in ten years, the Republic will have a uniform in a color that actually suits you," her eyes twinkled as she smiled at her jab.

"Hey!" Han squawked, laughing back because they both knew she was right. Tan and dusty blue were not his best look.

Watching his sister and his best friend sharing a private joke as they walked down the aisle and knelt facing each other in front of Mon, Luke smiled. He hadn't been sure what he would sense in them at their wedding ceremony. He didn't need the Force to sense their exhaustion, he just had to look at their faces. He sensed love, of course. Happiness. But what he sensed most was a feeling he hadn't expected: certainty. A calm certainty that they belonged bound for life and that, whatever their future may hold, they would face it together seemed to surround the couple. Luke had heard of nervous brides and of grooms who took off at the last minute due to cold feet, but at this marriage ceremony, there wasn't a smidgeon of doubt to be found. Luke felt a small twinge of pain…he'd never felt anything close to what they felt for each other. He desperately wanted to, someday.

Mon began with the short introductory invocation favored by Corellians before she moved on to the vows. Han and Leia joined hands, her left in his left, her right in his right, their arms intertwined in the ancient Alderaanian symbol of oneness. Mon turned to Leia and smiled.

"Leia of the House Organa of Alderaan, I ask you to speak your vows to your intended in the presence of your witnesses and friends."

Leia found her voice shaky with emotion as she began. "Before these our witnesses I promise myself to you as your wife. I will bear with you our sorrows and celebrate with you our joys, be your guide in darkness and your shelter from the sun, encourage you with a friend's devotion, cherish you with a lover's adoration, and travel as your constant companion on all the journeys of our shared life. I give myself to you alone, and will love, respect and treasure you, as your partner and your spouse, for as long as we both shall live."

She squeezed Han's hands, as she looked at him, a happy tear rolling down her cheek. He gently brushed it away before taking her hands again.

"And you, Han Solo of Corellia, I likewise ask you to speak your vows to your intended in the presence of your witnesses and friends."

"Before these our witnesses I promise myself to you as your husband. I will bear with you our sorrows and celebrate with you our joys, be your guide in darkness…"

Han hesitated. Thinking of his blindness during his rescue on Tatooine, there was something he needed to add, "…as you have already been mine…and your shelter from the sun, encourage you with a friend's devotion, cherish you with a lover's adoration, and travel as your constant companion on all the journeys of our shared life. I give myself to you alone, and will love, respect and treasure you, as your partner and your spouse, for as long as we both shall live."

The vows complete, Leia smiled at Han, her eyes sparkling with happiness. His beaming smile back at her took her breath away.

Mon continued, reading the final seal of matrimony. "As you have so promised, I thus ordain. You are joined as one, husband and wife, two become one, for the rest of the days of your life. Han Solo, Leia Organa, I declare you to be wed."

She had barely finished the seal before Leia was in Han's arms.

"My wife…" he whispered as leaned toward her.

"My husband…" she replied just before their lips met.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Leia stuck close to Han during the small congratulatory reception. Not only did she want to stay as close to him for as long as she possibly could, but she was also a little concerned that he was well into overtime on his stimshot and would soon have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other.

"I'm still not sure whether I should kiss you or kill you, Lando," Han said, reflecting on the missing sensor array.

**Please do neither** Chewie requested.

Lando shook his head. "It wasn't just the array. There's a holo tape you should see in the datacomputer—"

"I'm pretty sure that's one holo I'm never going to want to watch," Han replied, taking a sip of the Corellian brandy that Chewie had somehow managed to get a hold of in the last few hours.

Leia turned to look for Luke and saw him at the viewport, staring out into space. He looked so alone. Han seemed to be managing, and Chewie was right there with him, so she let go of Han's hand and walked over to Luke, touching his arm.

"What is it?"

"It's nothing," he said, shaking his head.

"No, it's not nothing. And you'd better tell me now, before Han passes out from exhaustion or because he suddenly realizes how painful that flashburn actually is."

Luke laughed. "He's not feeling any pain right now. He may be the happiest man in the galaxy at the moment."

"And when it comes to Han, I may be the happiest woman. Everything else, though…" she shrugged. She still had no plan for how to tell Mon, but Mon had just asked Leia to stop by Mon's new office on Coruscant soon to pick up something that may relate to their conversation in the medunit. It was all too much to think about at the moment.

"I've been wanting someone – Yoda, Ben, Father – to appear and guide me so I can understand what comes next. But there's no one. Only me. Maybe it's because the task they raised me for is complete." Luke laughed wistfully. "You think I can just go back to being a moisture farmer on Tatooine?"

Leia considered her response carefully. "Luke, the Jedi you knew – Ben and Yoda – they were living in a galaxy that had become blinded by darkness. They were desperately grasping for the light – and that light, Luke, is you."

"But like you said, there will always be dark."

"Yes. Which is why we need a light as bright and as unfiltered as yours so badly. And why I still want to be trained, as much as is possible," she paused, knowing that she was about to take a big step toward committing herself to Luke's future. She seemed to be full of commitments today. "I'll help you, Luke. Whatever form you want the Jedi, or light-side Force users, or whatever you decide, to take, let me be a part of it. Let me be your sounding board. Don't try to go it alone, ok?"

Luke smiled. She had no idea how much he had needed to hear her say that.

"Thank you, Leia. I won't take you as a 'padawan', because I'm no Master, and I'm not even sure that I'll train Jedi, but I will train you. If for no other reason than your crazy swordsmanship skills."

Luke's smile grew wide as Han joined them. Han had seen them deep in conversation again, and that usually signaled bad news.

"What's the matter, kid?" Han asked Luke.

Leia could see that Han was starting to fade. He was barely managing to keep his eyes open.

"Oh, just trying to figure out my place in the galaxy," Luke said.

"That all?"

"Yeah, just minor stuff. Trivia, really." Luke laughed.

"Han, I think we need to get you home before Chewie has to carry you," Leia observed.

"Yeah, probably right," Han agreed, yawning. "But you're getting THE LOOK, kid."

"I noticed," Luke parried. He was indeed getting THE LOOK from Leia.

She ignored them both. She figured she'd be doing a lot of that over the next fifty years. "Luke. Whatever path you choose, I'm sure of one thing: you weren't meant to be alone. Don't accept the Old Ways just because you think you should. Oh, and about those Old Ways: in case it wasn't totally obvious, I'm out."

Luke looked at his sister and Han. Two people who had seemed so mismatched, but their match had made them immeasurably happy, giving Leia the courage not to fall to the Dark Side because, even in the face of tremendous suffering, she would not turn away from love.

_ Yes_, Luke thought. _That attachment rule needs to be consigned to history._

"I promise. I'm out too, Leia."

"Good. Because I invited Adria Pier for a reason." She took Luke's hand as she rested her head on Han's chest.

_ The last of the Jedi will you be…_Luke remembered Yoda's words again as the three orphans, now family, looked out at the stars.

Yes, he would be the last of the old Jedi. He would also be the first of something new. And with that thought, Luke Skywalker felt the light, and he felt the dark. He also felt something he'd never sensed before.

He felt the Force at peace.


End file.
